Re: [BUG ?] checkpatch.pl rejects as error something I think it ought to be allow

[Corey Ashford <cjashfor@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On 02/21/2011 03:40 PM, Andy Whitcroft wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 03:28:02PM -0800, Corey Ashford wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a piece of code where I have two constants defined as follows:
>>
>> 	static const unsigned long polling_interval_sec = 1;
>> 	static const unsigned long polling_interval_ns = 0;
>>
>> Now, it's clear to me that I want these two values to have the
>> keywords const and static.  I could use a #define here, but const
>> static seemed cleaner to me.
>>
>> When I run checkpatch.pl across this code, I get this error:
>>
>> ERROR: do not initialise statics to 0 or NULL.
>>
>> I think the problem here is that another case is needed for "static
>> const" that does allow 0.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Thanks for your consideration,
>
> The warning is intended to tell you that the = 0 is unnecessary.  Any
> static is 0 by default I believe.  At some point the addition of the 0
> would move the value from the bss to the data segment bloating the code.
> This may no longer be true.

OK, but that means I'd have to have a declaration like this, which looks 
quite odd to me:

	static const poll_interval_ns; /* = 0 */

I don't think that is preferable to this:

	static const poll_interval_ns = 0;

- Corey