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mtd: maps: sa1100-flash: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

PATCH Applied Gustavo A. R. Silva 2 participants 2 messages Mar 19, 2020 – Mar 24, 2020 Memory technology devices (MTD)

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PATCH 1/1 mtd: maps: sa1100-flash: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2], introduced in C99:

struct foo {
        int stuff;
        struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by this change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

---
 drivers/mtd/maps/sa1100-flash.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
drivers/mtd/maps/sa1100-flash.c +1 -1
index 47602af4ee34..bb1ef650ffd2 100644
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ struct sa_subdev_info {
 struct sa_info {
 	struct mtd_info		*mtd;
 	int			num_subdev;
-	struct sa_subdev_info	subdev[0];
+	struct sa_subdev_info	subdev[];
 };
 
 static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(sa1100_vpp_lock);
Signature · 1 line
2.23.0
maintainer Applied
#1 lore raw
Quoted 22 lines · Gustavo A. R. Silva

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2], introduced in C99:

struct foo {
        int stuff;
        struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by this change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

Quoted 7 lines

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Applied to https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mtd/linux.git mtd/next, thanks.

Miquel