linux-kernel - [PATCH] serial: 8250_pci: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

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Message-ID: <20200213004426.GA7886@embeddedor.com>
Date:   Wed, 12 Feb 2020 18:44:26 -0600
From:   "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@...eddedor.com>
To:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Jiri Slaby <jslaby@...e.com>
Cc:     linux-serial@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@...eddedor.com>
Subject: [PATCH] serial: 8250_pci: 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")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@...eddedor.com>
---
 drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_pci.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_pci.c b/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_pci.c
index 939685fed396..0804469ff052 100644
--- a/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_pci.c
+++ b/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_pci.c
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ struct serial_private {
 	unsigned int		nr;
 	struct pci_serial_quirk	*quirk;
 	const struct pciserial_board *board;
-	int			line[0];
+	int			line[];
 };
 
 static const struct pci_device_id pci_use_msi[] = {
-- 
2.23.0