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To: "Miller, Mike (OS Dev)" <Mike.Miller@hp.com>
Cc: "Jesper Juhl" <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH 09/14] Big kfree NULL check cleanup - misc remaining
 drivers
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From: Roland Dreier <rolandd@cisco.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 13:12:03 -0700
In-Reply-To: <D4CFB69C345C394284E4B78B876C1CF10AF98879@cceexc23.americas.cpqcorp.net> (Mike
 Miller's message of "Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:01:42 -0500")
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    Mike> I'm not sure I agree that these are pointless
    Mike> checks. They're not in the main code path so nothing is lost
    Mike> by checking first. What if the pointer is NULL????

Read the source to kfree().  The first thing it does is check if the
pointer it is passed is NULL, so the only thing that checking in the
caller does is save a function call.  However I agree with Jesper that
saving .text and cutting down on source code size far outweighs the
cost of these extra function calls.

 - R.
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