Re: [PATCH 3/3] x86: OLPC: speed up device tree creation during boot (v2)

[Andres Salomon <dilinger@queued.net>]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:04:04 -0800
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:

> On 11/18/2010 03:02 AM, Michael Ellerman wrote:
> > On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 09:34 +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >>
> >> Look at the general balance of hardship: very little harm is done
> >> (it's not a big deal if a variable is only used in a single
> >> function) but having it with local variables can be _really_
> >> harmful - for example i overlooked them when i reviewed this
> >> patch. I dont like important details obscured - i like them to be
> >> apparent. Again, this is something that some people can parse
> >> immediately on the visual level 
> >> - me and many others cannot.
> > 
> 
> No, sorry, this sounds like a personal preference that is well out of
> line with the vast majority of C programmers I've ever come across,
> not just in the Linux kernel world but outside of it.


This is actually one of the reasons I specifically like initialized
static variables (inside of functions).  Take the following code:

int foo(void)
{
	static char *frob = NULL;
	int p;

	if (frob) {
		...
	}


Upon seeing that and thinking "whoa, how could frob be
initialized and then checked?", I realize that it's either a bug or I
look back at the initialization and realize that frob is static.  It's
less obvious (to me) with non-explicit initialization.