Re: [PATCH] mm: ksize() should silently accept a NULL pointer

From: Matthew Wilcox
Date: Wed Jun 17 2020 - 12:26:50 EST


On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 04:23:04PM +0000, Christopher Lameter wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Jun 2020, William Kucharski wrote:
>
> > Other mm routines such as kfree() and kzfree() silently do the right
> > thing if passed a NULL pointer, so ksize() should do the same.
>
> Ok so the size of an no object pointer is zero? Ignoring the freeing
> of a nonexisting object makes sense. But determining it size?

ksize() is misnamed. It's not the size of the object, it's the number
of bytes allocated for that object.

A NULL pointer represents a freed object, or one that was never
allocated in the first place. Clearly that's 0 bytes. What other
answer would make sense?