Re: p = kmalloc(sizeof(*p), )

Andrew Morton
2005-09-20T18:00:32Z

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Maw, 2005-09-20 at 10:11 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > > Since some of the other major contributors to the kernel appear to
> > > also disagree with the statement, I think that the entry in
> > > CodingStyle must be removed.
> >
> > Nobody has put forward a decent reason for doing so.
>
> I've seen five decent reasons so far. Which of the reasons on the thread
> do you disagree with and why ?
>

umm, the three reasons which you deleted from the mail to which you're
replying?

> "I want to grep for
> initialisations" is pretty pointless because a) it won't catch everything
> anyway and b) most structures are allocated and initialised at a single
> place and many of those which aren't should probably be converted to do
> that anyway.
>
> The broader point is that you're trying to optimise for the wrong thing.
> We should optimise for those who read code, not for those who write it.
>

If you look back, your five reasons tend to address modifiability, not
readability.