[PATCH v1] perf parse-events: Fix parsing of >30kb event strings

From: Ian Rogers
Date: Fri Sep 05 2025 - 00:27:04 EST


Metrics may generate many particularly uncore event references. The
resulting event string may then be >32kb. The parse events lex is
using "%option reject" which stores backtracking state in a buffer
sized at roughtly 30kb. If the event string is larger than this then a
buffer overflow and typically a crash happens.

The need for "%option reject" was for BPF events which were removed in
commit 3d6dfae88917 ("perf parse-events: Remove BPF event
support"). As "%option reject" is both a memory and performance cost
let's remove it and fix the parsing case for event strings being over
~30kb.

Whilst cleaning up "%option reject" make the header files accurately
reflect functions used in the code and tidy up not requiring yywrap.

Measuring on the "PMU JSON event tests" a modest reduction of 0.41%
user time and 0.27% max resident size was observed. More importantly
this change fixes parsing large metrics and event strings.

Signed-off-by: Ian Rogers <irogers@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
tools/perf/util/parse-events.l | 17 +++--------------
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

diff --git a/tools/perf/util/parse-events.l b/tools/perf/util/parse-events.l
index 2034590eb789..1eaa8dbc26d8 100644
--- a/tools/perf/util/parse-events.l
+++ b/tools/perf/util/parse-events.l
@@ -5,16 +5,14 @@
%option stack
%option bison-locations
%option yylineno
-%option reject
+%option noyywrap

%{
#include <errno.h>
-#include <sys/types.h>
-#include <sys/stat.h>
-#include <unistd.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <stdio.h>
#include "parse-events.h"
#include "parse-events-bison.h"
-#include "evsel.h"

char *parse_events_get_text(yyscan_t yyscanner);
YYSTYPE *parse_events_get_lval(yyscan_t yyscanner);
@@ -222,10 +220,6 @@ do { \
yycolumn += yyleng; \
} while (0);

-#define USER_REJECT \
- yycolumn -= yyleng; \
- REJECT
-
%}

%x mem
@@ -423,8 +417,3 @@ r{num_raw_hex} { return str(yyscanner, PE_RAW); }
. { }

%%
-
-int parse_events_wrap(void *scanner __maybe_unused)
-{
- return 1;
-}
--
2.51.0.355.g5224444f11-goog