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[next] batman-adv: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

Message ID 20200217214300.GA14129@embeddedor (mailing list archive)
State Accepted, archived
Delegated to: Simon Wunderlich
Headers
Series [next] batman-adv: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member |

Commit Message

Gustavo A. R. Silva Feb. 17, 2020, 9:43 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]

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")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
---
 net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

Comments

Sven Eckelmann Feb. 17, 2020, 9:49 p.m. UTC | #1 
On Monday, 17 February 2020 22:43:00 CET 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]
> 
> 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")
> 
> Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
> ---
>  net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

Applied

Thanks, 
	Sven
Gustavo A. R. Silva Feb. 27, 2020, 8:06 p.m. UTC | #2 
On 2/17/20 15:49, Sven Eckelmann wrote:

>>
>> [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")
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
>> ---
>>  net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c | 2 +-
>>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> Applied
> 

Thanks, Sven.
--
Gustavo
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c b/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c
index 3d21dd83f8cc..b85da4b7a77b 100644
--- a/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c
+++ b/net/batman-adv/distributed-arp-table.c
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@  struct batadv_dhcp_packet {
 	__u8 sname[64];
 	__u8 file[128];
 	__be32 magic;
-	__u8 options[0];
+	__u8 options[];
 };
 
 #define BATADV_DHCP_YIADDR_LEN sizeof(((struct batadv_dhcp_packet *)0)->yiaddr)