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  • Gustavo A. R. Silva's avatar
    perf tools: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array · 6549a8c0
    Gustavo A. R. Silva authored
    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]
    
    sizeof(flexible-array-member) triggers a warning because flexible array
    members have incomplete type[1]. There are some instances of code in
    which the sizeof operator is being incorrectly/erroneously applied to
    zero-length arrays and the result is zero. Such instances may be hiding
    some bugs. So, this work (flexible-array member conversions) will also
    help to get completely rid of those sorts of issues.
    
    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 76497732
    
     ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarGustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@kernel.org>
    Cc: Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@intel.com>
    Cc: Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>
    Cc: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
    Cc: Ian Rogers <irogers@google.com>
    Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
    Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
    Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
    Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
    Link: http://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200515172926.GA31976@embeddedor
    
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarArnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
    6549a8c0