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Message-ID: <adc76d7c441e8f10697b61ceaff66207fb219886.camel@perches.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: Add kvfree_sensitive() for freeing sensitive data
 objects
From:   Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc:     David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>,
        Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.sakkinen@linux.intel.com>,
        James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>,
        "Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@hallyn.com>,
        Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>, keyrings@vger.kernel.org,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Date:   Mon, 06 Apr 2020 09:42:52 -0700
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On Mon, 2020-04-06 at 09:41 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 9:12 AM Joe Perches <joe@perches.com> wrote:
> > While I agree with Linus about the __ prefix,
> > the z is pretty common and symmetric to all
> > the <foo>zalloc uses.
> 
> Yes, we have a pattern of 'z' for zero.
> 
> But the _operation_ isn't symmetric.
> 
> "kzalloc()" has absolutely _nothing_ to do with "kzfree()". They are
> not some kind of "opposite symmetric operation".  They are totally
> different. They have absolutely nothing in common.

Dubious assertion.  Both end up with zeroed memory.