[RFC][PATCH v2][RESEND] string.h: Add strncmp_prefix() helper macro

From: Steven Rostedt
Date: Wed Dec 19 2018 - 22:10:47 EST



[ Resending because I missed adding Joe to the Cc list ]

A discussion came up in the trace triggers thread about converting a
bunch of:

strncmp(str, "const", sizeof("const") - 1)

use cases into a helper macro. It started with:

#define strncmp_const(str, const) \
strncmp(str, const, sizeof(const) - 1)

But then Joe Perches mentioned that if a const is not used, the
sizeof() will be the size of a pointer, which can be bad. And that
gcc will optimize strlen("const") into "sizeof("const") - 1".

Thinking about this more, a quick grep in the kernel tree found several
(thousands!) of cases that use this construct. A quick grep also
revealed that there's probably several bugs in that use case. Some are
that people forgot the "- 1" (which I found) and others could be that
the constant for the sizeof is different than the constant (although, I
haven't found any of those, but I also didn't look hard).

I figured the best thing to do is to create a helper macro and place it
into include/linux/string.h. And go around and fix all the open coded
versions of it later.

I plan on only applying this patch and updating the tracing hooks for
this merge window. And perhaps use it to fix some of the bugs that were
found.

I was going to just use:

#define strncmp_prefix(str, prefix) \
strncmp(str, prefix, strlen(prefix))

but then realized that "prefix" is used twice, and will break if
someone does something like:

strncmp_prefix(str, ptr++);

So instead I check with __builtin_constant_p() to see if the second
parameter is truly a constant, which I use sizeof() anyway (why bother
gcc to optimize it, if we already know it's a constant), and copy the
parameter into a local variable and use that local variable for the non
constant part (with strlen).

Link:
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/e3e754f2bd18e56eaa8baf79bee619316ebf4cfc.1545161087.git.tom.zanussi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
---
Changes since v1:

- Sending this time as Bryana's dad

- Moved the assignment of the non constant into the non constant block
(Pointed out by Joe Perches)

- Added "typeof(prefix)" to define the non constant variable
(Suggested by Joe Perches)

diff --git a/include/linux/string.h b/include/linux/string.h
index 27d0482e5e05..a998a53333ef 100644
--- a/include/linux/string.h
+++ b/include/linux/string.h
@@ -14,6 +14,28 @@ extern void *memdup_user(const void __user *,
size_t); extern void *vmemdup_user(const void __user *, size_t);
extern void *memdup_user_nul(const void __user *, size_t);

+/*
+ * A common way to test a prefix of a string is to do:
+ * strncmp(str, prefix, sizeof(prefix) - 1)
+ *
+ * But this can lead to bugs due to typos, or if prefix is a pointer
+ * and not a constant. Instead use strncmp_prefix().
+ */
+#define strncmp_prefix(str,
prefix) \
+
({ \
+ int
____strcmp_prefix_ret____; \
+ if (__builtin_constant_p(&prefix))
{ \
+ ____strcmp_prefix_ret____
= \
+ strncmp(str, prefix, sizeof(prefix) -
1); \
+ } else
{ \
+ typeof(prefix) ____strcmp_prefix____ =
prefix; \
+ ____strcmp_prefix_ret____
= \
+ strncmp(str,
____strcmp_prefix____, \
+
strlen(____strcmp_prefix____)); \
+ }
\
+
____strcmp_prefix_ret____; \
+ })
+
/*
* Include machine specific inline routines
*/