diff mbox series

dmaengine: qcom: bam_dma: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array

Message ID 20200508210707.GA24136@embeddedor (mailing list archive)
State Accepted
Commit c18b5bdebd67112314fe73762d269d381ce3073c
Headers show
Series dmaengine: qcom: bam_dma: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array | expand

Commit Message

Gustavo A. R. Silva May 8, 2020, 9:07 p.m. UTC
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]

sizeof(flexible-array-member) triggers a warning because flexible array
members have incomplete type[1]. There are some instances of code in
which the sizeof operator is being incorrectly/erroneously applied to
zero-length arrays and the result is zero. Such instances may be hiding
some bugs. So, this work (flexible-array member conversions) will also
help to get completely rid of those sorts of issues.

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")

Reviewed-by: Jeffrey Hugo <jhugo@codeaurora.org>
Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@kernel.org>
---
 drivers/dma/qcom/bam_dma.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

Comments

Vinod Koul May 13, 2020, 2:55 p.m. UTC | #1
On 08-05-20, 16:07, Gustavo A. R. Silva wrote:
> 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]
> 
> sizeof(flexible-array-member) triggers a warning because flexible array
> members have incomplete type[1]. There are some instances of code in
> which the sizeof operator is being incorrectly/erroneously applied to
> zero-length arrays and the result is zero. Such instances may be hiding
> some bugs. So, this work (flexible-array member conversions) will also
> help to get completely rid of those sorts of issues.
> 
> 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, thanks
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/drivers/dma/qcom/bam_dma.c b/drivers/dma/qcom/bam_dma.c
index ef73f65224b1..5a08dd0d3388 100644
--- a/drivers/dma/qcom/bam_dma.c
+++ b/drivers/dma/qcom/bam_dma.c
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@  struct bam_async_desc {
 	struct list_head desc_node;
 	enum dma_transfer_direction dir;
 	size_t length;
-	struct bam_desc_hw desc[0];
+	struct bam_desc_hw desc[];
 };
 
 enum bam_reg {