linux-kernel - [PATCH] aio: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

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Message-ID: <20200212194804.GA1594@embeddedor>
Date:   Wed, 12 Feb 2020 13:48:04 -0600
From:   "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@...eddedor.com>
To:     Benjamin LaHaise <bcrl@...ck.org>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Cc:     linux-aio@...ck.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@...eddedor.com>
Subject: [PATCH] aio: 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
inadvertenly 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@...eddedor.com>
---
 fs/aio.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/aio.c b/fs/aio.c
index 94f2b9256c0c..13c4be7f00f0 100644
--- a/fs/aio.c
+++ b/fs/aio.c
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ struct aio_ring {
 	unsigned	header_length;	/* size of aio_ring */
 
 
-	struct io_event		io_events[0];
+	struct io_event		io_events[];
 }; /* 128 bytes + ring size */
 
 /*
-- 
2.25.0