Subject: Re: [3/3] GenWQE: Adjust 12 checks for null pointers
To: Frank Haverkamp <haver@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        "Guilherme G. Piccoli" <gpiccoli@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        =?UTF-8?Q?J=c3=b6rg-Stephan_Vogt?= <jsvogt@de.ibm.com>,
        =?UTF-8?Q?Michael_R=c3=bcttger?= <michael@ibmra.de>
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 <f0998daeca45411ab0b161464ac2931d@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
From: SF Markus Elfring <elfring@users.sourceforge.net>
Message-ID: <15ccaf5d-3601-e895-900b-078fbca148d6@users.sourceforge.net>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2018 14:50:12 +0100
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

> I personally like the explicit compare (ptr != NULL) more than the !ptr notation.

Coding style aspects can evolve, can't they?


> When was the checkpatch.pl script modified to suggest the latter notation?

Would you like to take another look at the software update “checkpatch: add
--strict "pointer comparison to NULL" test” from 2014-12-10?
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b75ac618df751b927469ddbca63cf151a62f0f9d


> Is there any advantage other than the shorter notation?

* Do you eventually care for an influence on the run time characteristics
  for the compilation of this software module?

* How do you think about to reduce the dependency on a special preprocessor symbol?

Regards,
Markus