Re: [PATCH] init - fix building bug and potential buffer overflow

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Thu, 15 May 2008 14:15:38 -0700 (PDT)
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, 15 May 2008, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > 
> > (yeah, I normally parenthesise sizeof too, but this provided 80-col
> > salvation)
> 
> Why?

this, basically:

>  init/main.c |   78 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------------
>  1 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 37 deletions(-)

the dont-mix-bugfixes-and-cleanups mantra.

The patch looks good to me and compiles cleanly on various architectures.

> Talking about cleanups, why the *hell* does print_fn_descriptor_symbol() 
> take an "unsigned long", when every single user would want to give it a 
> pointer?

Yes, we make that mistake fairly regularly (looks at timer_list.data). 
We start out not being sure whether most callers will pass in a ulong
or a pointer and guess wrongly.

> Would somebody please want to move that cast into the macro (or better 
> yet, make it an inline function that takes a 'void *'), and remove all the 
> casts from the callers?

Would be nice.