netdev - Re: [PATCH] net/ipv4: fib_trie: Avoid cryptic ternary expressions

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Date:   Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:21:40 -0700
From:   Matthias Kaehlcke <mka@...omium.org>
To:     Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@...il.com>
Cc:     "David S . Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Alexey Kuznetsov <kuznet@....inr.ac.ru>,
        Hideaki YOSHIFUJI <yoshfuji@...ux-ipv6.org>,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Douglas Anderson <dianders@...omium.org>,
        Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com>,
        Nathan Huckleberry <nhuck@...gle.com>,
        clang-built-linux@...glegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net/ipv4: fib_trie: Avoid cryptic ternary expressions

On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 04:04:20PM -0700, Nathan Chancellor wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 02:14:40PM -0700, Matthias Kaehlcke wrote:
> > empty_child_inc/dec() use the ternary operator for conditional
> > operations. The conditions involve the post/pre in/decrement
> > operator and the operation is only performed when the condition
> > is *not* true. This is hard to parse for humans, use a regular
> > 'if' construct instead and perform the in/decrement separately.
> > 
> > This also fixes two warnings that are emitted about the value
> > of the ternary expression being unused, when building the kernel
> > with clang + "kbuild: Remove unnecessary -Wno-unused-value"
> > (https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/1089869/):
> > 
> > CC      net/ipv4/fib_trie.o
> > net/ipv4/fib_trie.c:351:2: error: expression result unused [-Werror,-Wunused-value]
> >         ++tn_info(n)->empty_children ? : ++tn_info(n)->full_children;
> > 
> 
> As an FYI, this is also being fixed in clang:
> 
> https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42239
> 
> https://reviews.llvm.org/D63369

Great, thanks!

In this case it was actually useful to get the warning, even though it
didn't point out the actual bug. I think in general it would be
preferable to avoid such constructs, even when they are correct. But
then again, it's the reviewers/maintainers task to avoid unnecessarily
cryptic code from slipping in, and this just happens to be one instance
where the compiler could have helped.