[PATCH v5 2/3] tracing: Return ERR_PTR() from expr_str()

From: Pengpeng Hou

Date: Thu Jun 11 2026 - 02:00:11 EST


expr_str() currently reports all failure cases as NULL, so callers cannot
distinguish invalid recursion depth from allocation failure or later
string construction errors.

Return ERR_PTR()-encoded errors from expr_str() and make parse_unary()
and parse_expr() propagate them. Clear expr->name before destroying the
hist field so the error pointer is not freed as a string.

Signed-off-by: Pengpeng Hou <pengpeng@xxxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/trace/trace_events_hist.c | 25 ++++++++++++++++++++-----
1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/trace/trace_events_hist.c b/kernel/trace/trace_events_hist.c
index f778f060e922..082842e64ccd 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/trace_events_hist.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/trace_events_hist.c
@@ -1762,11 +1762,11 @@ static char *expr_str(struct hist_field *field, unsigned int level)
char *expr __free(kfree) = NULL;

if (level > 1)
- return NULL;
+ return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);

expr = kzalloc(MAX_FILTER_STR_VAL, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!expr)
- return NULL;
+ return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM);

if (!field->operands[0]) {
expr_field_str(field, expr);
@@ -1778,8 +1778,8 @@ static char *expr_str(struct hist_field *field, unsigned int level)

strcat(expr, "-(");
subexpr = expr_str(field->operands[0], ++level);
- if (!subexpr)
- return NULL;
+ if (IS_ERR(subexpr))
+ return subexpr;

strcat(expr, subexpr);
strcat(expr, ")");
@@ -1805,7 +1805,7 @@ static char *expr_str(struct hist_field *field, unsigned int level)
strcat(expr, "*");
break;
default:
- return NULL;
+ return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
}

expr_field_str(field->operands[1], expr);
@@ -2624,6 +2624,11 @@ static struct hist_field *parse_unary(struct hist_trigger_data *hist_data,
expr->is_signed = operand1->is_signed;
expr->operator = FIELD_OP_UNARY_MINUS;
expr->name = expr_str(expr, 0);
+ if (IS_ERR(expr->name)) {
+ ret = PTR_ERR(expr->name);
+ expr->name = NULL;
+ goto free;
+ }
expr->type = kstrdup_const(operand1->type, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!expr->type) {
ret = -ENOMEM;
@@ -2836,6 +2841,11 @@ static struct hist_field *parse_expr(struct hist_trigger_data *hist_data,
destroy_hist_field(operand1, 0);

expr->name = expr_str(expr, 0);
+ if (IS_ERR(expr->name)) {
+ ret = PTR_ERR(expr->name);
+ expr->name = NULL;
+ goto free_expr;
+ }
} else {
/* The operand sizes should be the same, so just pick one */
expr->size = operand1->size;
@@ -2849,6 +2859,11 @@ static struct hist_field *parse_expr(struct hist_trigger_data *hist_data,
}

expr->name = expr_str(expr, 0);
+ if (IS_ERR(expr->name)) {
+ ret = PTR_ERR(expr->name);
+ expr->name = NULL;
+ goto free_expr;
+ }
}

return expr;
--
2.50.1 (Apple Git-155)