Re: [PATCH] scsi: advansys: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

From: Hannes Reinecke
Date: Thu Feb 13 2020 - 11:52:31 EST


On 2/13/20 1:02 AM, Gustavo A. R. Silva wrote:
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>
---
drivers/scsi/advansys.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/scsi/advansys.c b/drivers/scsi/advansys.c
index a242a62caaa1..c2c7850ff7b4 100644
--- a/drivers/scsi/advansys.c
+++ b/drivers/scsi/advansys.c
@@ -316,7 +316,7 @@ typedef struct asc_sg_head {
ushort queue_cnt;
ushort entry_to_copy;
ushort res;
- ASC_SG_LIST sg_list[0];
+ ASC_SG_LIST sg_list[];
} ASC_SG_HEAD;
typedef struct asc_scsi_q {

Reviewed-by: Hannes Reinecke <hare@xxxxxxx>

Cheers,

Hannes
--
Dr. Hannes Reinecke Teamlead Storage & Networking
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