linux-kernel - Re: SLUB: Return ZERO_SIZE

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Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.0.99.0706050804170.27388@sigma.j-a-k-j.com>
Date:	Tue, 5 Jun 2007 08:07:31 -0400 (EDT)
From:	"John Anthony Kazos Jr." <jakj@...-k-j.com>
To:	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...il.com>
cc:	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
Subject: Re: SLUB: Return ZERO_SIZE_PTR for kmalloc(0)

> > Here a version of the patch that drops the WARN_ONs
> 
> And now all that's done, how about yet another random person stepping in and
> suggesting NIL or maybe NIL_PTR instead of ZERO_SIZE_PTR?
> 
> I understand the idea is that code need not necesarily care about zero sized
> allocation meaning it won't (generally) need to spell it out but it's still a
> dreadful name... :-(

The name says exactly what it is. It's not at all dreadful. If we're going 
to return a special value in the zero-size case (and in only that case) as 
a valid pointer instead of actually allocating one byte and treating it as 
zero, what we have is...a zero-size pointer. ZERO_SIZE_PTR is a pretty 
damn good name.
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