Re: [PATCH v3] checkpatch: fix false positives in REPEATED_WORD warning

[Lukas Bulwahn]

On Fri, 23 Oct 2020, Aditya Srivastava wrote:

> Presence of hexadecimal address or symbol results in false warning
> message by checkpatch.pl.
> 
> For example, running checkpatch on commit b8ad540dd4e4 ("mptcp: fix
> memory leak in mptcp_subflow_create_socket()") results in warning:
> 
> WARNING:REPEATED_WORD: Possible repeated word: 'ff'
>     00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 2f 30 0a 81 88 ff ff  ........./0.....
> 
> Similarly, the presence of list command output in commit results in
> an unnecessary warning.
> 
> For example, running checkpatch on commit 899e5ffbf246 ("perf record:
> Introduce --switch-output-event") gives:
> 
> WARNING:REPEATED_WORD: Possible repeated word: 'root'
>   dr-xr-x---. 12 root root    4096 Apr 27 17:46 ..
> 
> Here, it reports 'ff' and 'root to be repeated, but it is in fact part
> of some address or code, where it has to be repeated.
> 
> In these cases, the intent of the warning to find stylistic issues in
> commit messages is not met and the warning is just completely wrong in
> this case.
> 
> To avoid these warnings, add additional regex check for the
> directory permission pattern and avoid checking the line for this
> class of warning. Similarly, to avoid hex pattern, check if the word
> consists of hex symbols and skip this warning if it is not among the
> common english words formed using hex letters.
> 
> A quick evaluation on v5.6..v5.8 showed that this fix reduces
> REPEATED_WORD warnings from 2797 to 907.
> 
> A quick manual check found all cases are related to hex output or
> list command outputs in commit messages.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Aditya Srivastava <yashsri421@xxxxxxxxx>

I think this strategy now makes sense and has the right complexity for a 
good heuristics in this case.

Nice job, Aditya.

Are you ready for a next challenge of this kind? Would you like to work on 
further rules that can be improved with your evaluation approach?

Lukas

> ---
>  scripts/checkpatch.pl | 15 ++++++++++++++-
>  1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
> index 9b9ffd876e8a..3bd8205c48d8 100755
> --- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
> +++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
> @@ -3051,7 +3051,9 @@ sub process {
>  		}
>  
>  # check for repeated words separated by a single space
> -		if ($rawline =~ /^\+/ || $in_commit_log) {
> +# avoid false positive from list command eg, '-rw-r--r-- 1 root root'
> +		if (($rawline =~ /^\+/ || $in_commit_log) &&
> +				$rawline !~ /[bcCdDlMnpPs\?-][rwxsStT-]{9}/) {
>  			while ($rawline =~ /\b($word_pattern) (?=($word_pattern))/g) {
>  
>  				my $first = $1;
> @@ -3065,6 +3067,17 @@ sub process {
>  				next if ($first ne $second);
>  				next if ($first eq 'long');
>  
> +				# avoid repeating hex occurrences like 'ff ff fe 09 ...'
> +				my @non_hex_words = (
> +					"add", "added", "ace", "aced", "bad", "be", "bed", "bead",
> +					"beaded", "bedded", "cab", "cabbed", "cede", "ceded",
> +					"dead", "deaf", "deb", "decade", "deed", "deface", "defaced", "efface",
> +					"effaced", "face", "faced", "fade", "faded", "fed", "fee", "feed"
> +				);
> +				if ($first =~ /\b[0-9a-f]{2,}\b/) {
> +					next if (!grep(/^$first$/, @non_hex_words));
> +				}
> +
>  				if (WARN("REPEATED_WORD",
>  					 "Possible repeated word: '$first'\n" . $herecurr) &&
>  				    $fix) {
> -- 
> 2.17.1
> 
>