Re: [PATCH] Toshiba ACPI Extras 0.16

[John Belmonte <jvb-ZFKsivP1bGvOQU1ULcgDhA@public.gmane.org>]

M. Warner Losh wrote:
> So what was wrong with strlcpy?  Was strncpy used because trailing
> NULs for the length of the field was required?  That, and the point
> below, are the only differences between two versions of the code
> posted.

The strlcpy function expects the input string to be zero-terminated, 
which is not the case here.

> Also:
> 	strncyp(str2, str, n); str2[n] = '\0';
> means that you copy n + 1 bytes into str2, which is typically a bug,
> so a comment explaining why it isn't would be in order.

It isn't a bug because

     char* str2 = kmalloc(n + 1, GFP_KERNEL)

> As it is the comment of 'don't even consider using strlcpy' is about
> useless because it tells what, but not why.  And there's a long
> history of people in the Linux world ignoring dictates when the
> reasons get lost in the mists of time.

What's going on is that someone made a conversion to my driver which was 
not functionally equivalent and caused a serious bug, and did not notify 
me of the change.  It's my name in the maintainer field and I have to 
deal with resulting bug reports.  I wasted an entire day tracking down 
exactly what happened, discussing it with the people involved and even 
more with those not involved, and preparing a correction.

This should have never happened, and the comment I added is only a 
reaction to this.  To me it states the obvious, "don't break my code", 
and indeed left to my own devices it wouldn't be there.


-- 
http:// if   l .o  /



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