Re: memset as memzero

Robert P. J. Day
2007-09-23T16:35:44Z

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007, Dave Jones wrote:

> There is one useful argument for memzero (or bzero to give it its
> proper name), and that's that it's impossible to screw up. I'm still
> amazed at how many times I see
>
> memset (x,size,0);
>
> in various code. So much so, that my editor highlights it now to
> spot it during code review. As does my mail client. To be on the
> safe side, I also have a cron job grepping for it in my
> ~/Mail/commits for all the projects I'm interested in.

taking a step back, regardless of what constitutes a sane versus
not-sane definition of a useful macro, i think a lot of the content of
kernel.h could be moved out of there and put in a more appropriate
header file called, say, macros.h.

the first comment in kernel.h claims that

/*
* 'kernel.h' contains some often-used function prototypes etc
*/

but there's buckets more stuff in there than just some function
prototypes. macros for type limits, alignment, array sizes, rounding,
and on and on. and as for those prototypes, is there any reason that
kernel.h includes them explicitly for the contents of lib/vsprintf.c
rather than just including, say, a hypothetical vsprintf.h? just
curious.

in any case, it would seem that kernel.h could stand a good cleaning.
it give the impression of just being an arbitrary dumping ground when
folks can't figure out where to put something.

rday
--
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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