Re: [PATCH RFC v2] mac80211: debugfs option to force TX status frames

From: Kalle Valo
Date: Mon Mar 11 2019 - 10:03:49 EST


ga58taw@xxxxxxxx writes:

> On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 05:42:04PM +0200, Kalle Valo wrote:
>> > + len = scnprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d\n", (int)local->force_tx_status);
>>
>> I wonder about the cast, is it guaranteed that a bool is always of the
>> same size as an int?
>
> Why is this a problem? If a bool is smaller than an int, the compiler
> emits code that will prepend the value of force_tx_status with zeros.

Let's say that a bool is a byte and int is four bytes. If you use "%d" I
would guess that in that case scnprintf() writes 4 bytes, meaning that 3
bytes will be overwriting either padding or some other field in the
struct.

But I'm no compiler expert so I'm not going to argue about this anymore.
I just wanted to point out that that the cast looks dangerous and I
would not do it.

--
Kalle Valo