Browsing thru the driver diassembly, I noticed that gcc was able to figure out that the 'ndev' pointer is always non-NULL when calling free_netdev() on the probe() method's error path and thus skip that redundant NULL check... gcc is smart, be like gcc! :-) Signed-off-by: Sergei Shtylyov --- drivers/net/ethernet/renesas/sh_eth.c | 3 +-- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-) Index: net-next/drivers/net/ethernet/renesas/sh_eth.c =================================================================== --- net-next.orig/drivers/net/ethernet/renesas/sh_eth.c +++ net-next/drivers/net/ethernet/renesas/sh_eth.c @@ -3282,8 +3282,7 @@ out_napi_del: out_release: /* net_dev free */ - if (ndev) - free_netdev(ndev); + free_netdev(ndev); pm_runtime_put(&pdev->dev); pm_runtime_disable(&pdev->dev);