Re: [PATCH] Fix readdir_r with long file names

[Florian Weimer <fweimer-H+wXaHxf7aLQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org>]

On 03/01/2016 11:41 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 03/01/2016 02:16 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
>>> Why not use a flexible array member for this?
>> For which part, and how exactly?
> 
> Something like the attached patch, say.  (Totally untested.)
> 
>> You can't put a flexible array member into a transparent union.
> 
> That's OK. Any such usage of struct dirent would be unportable anyway.
> 
>> If you mean to add some zero-width padding member at the end of the
>> struct, after the d_name member, then I'm worried that makes overrunning
>> the d_name array member even more undefined than it already is.
> 
> No, no padding member, just use C99 the way it was designed.  This
> should improve overrun detection in programs like valgrind. With glibc's
> current definition these programs can be fooled into thinking that
> struct dirent accesses are invalid (outside of array bounds) when they
> are actually OK, so people shut off array-bounds checking. If we used
> flexible array members, valgrind etc. should know that the array's upper
> bound is unknown and should not issue so many false alarms, so people
> can leave bounds checking on.

I don't think valgrind can see the difference, but you are correct in
principle (this is essentially the “undefined” part I was worried about).

Unfortunately, GCC does not produce a warning for taking the size of a
struct with a flexible member, or for using it in a non-pointer
declarator, so it does only half of what we want.  And at the cost of
changing sizeof (struct dirent), which can't be a good thing.

> If flexible arrays are no-go for some reason, I suppose we could use
> 'char 'd_name[SIZE_MAX - 1000];' instead. That should get peoples'
> attention. :-)

GCC refuses to compile the type definition, not just declarations.
Refusing declarations with an error would break quite a lot of existing
configure tests.

  struct dirent d; int z; z - d.d_ino;

is a common idiom to check for struct members.

Florian
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html