Re: [PATCH] Use NULL instead of integer 0 in security/selinux/

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Eric W. Biederman wrote:

> Is doing memset(&(struct with_embeded_pointers), 0, sizeof(struct))
> also wrong?
> 
> I don't see that 0 is WRONG.  I do agree that ``((void *)0)'' is
> slightly more typesafe than ``0'', but since we don't have a lot of
> (void *) pointers in the kernel that is still the WRONG pointer type.
> 
> I do see that NULL has superior readability and maintainability and so
> should be encouraged by Documentation/CodingStyle.
> 
> The B and K&R roots of a simple single type language are what give C
> most of it's simplicity flexibility and power.  Please don't be so
> eager to throw those out.  
> 
> You want to be so typesafe it sounds like you want to recode the
> kernel in Pascal.  You've written sparse, so it should be just a little
> more work to write a Pascal backend.  After that the kernel will be so
> typesafe the compiler won't let us poor programmers get it wrong.

You say that as if it were a bad thing...

I don't have a current C standard handy, but I believe there's a 
requirement that otherwise uninitialized static pointers be initialized 
to NULL even if that isn't "all bits off."

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me