[PATCH][next] ext4: dir: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

From: Gustavo A. R. Silva
Date: Mon Mar 09 2020 - 11:45:30 EST


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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
fs/ext4/dir.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/dir.c b/fs/ext4/dir.c
index 9aa1f75409b0..c654205f648d 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/dir.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/dir.c
@@ -392,7 +392,7 @@ struct fname {
__u32 inode;
__u8 name_len;
__u8 file_type;
- char name[0];
+ char name[];
};

/*
--
2.25.0