Re: [RFC] kmem_cache_zalloc

Christoph Hellwig
2002-03-27T20:19:49Z

On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 01:39:17PM -0600, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> In the interest of whittling down the changes that XFS makes to the core
> kernel, I thought I'd start throwing out some the easier self-contained
> modifications for discussion.
>
> XFS adds a kmem_cache_zalloc function to mm/slab.c, it does what you
> might expect: kmem_cache_alloc + memset

I'd really go for k(mem_)zalloc, but a kmem_cache_alloc leads people toward
writing bad code. The purpose of the slab allocator is to allow caching
readily constructed objects, a _zalloc destroys them on alloc.

I think code using kmem_cache_alloc really wants to use kzalloc and instead
of maintaining it's pool.

Christoph