Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S934863AbXHZBx5 (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:53:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S933724AbXHZBxs (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:53:48 -0400 Received: from smtpout.mac.com ([17.250.248.176]:50142 "EHLO smtpout.mac.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933670AbXHZBxr (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:53:47 -0400 In-Reply-To: <9a8748490708251736k5b751998yee72abdc8c4c1b53@mail.gmail.com> References: <1554af80879a7ef2f78a4d654f23c248203500d9.1187912217.git.jesper.juhl@gmail.com> <5ebfb93eca0dd43cf17876e643079cbcfeb3111c.1187912217.git.jesper.juhl@gmail.com> <200708241141.06358.vda.linux@googlemail.com> <9a8748490708251527n26cc2065n5b8716bd7f65e252@mail.gmail.com> <9a8748490708251728h51d51092r11a3562ceb63b2f9@mail.gmail.com> <9a8748490708251736k5b751998yee72abdc8c4c1b53@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <51189954-4301-4C83-91F2-26B376D0DDD7@mac.com> Cc: "Robert P. J. Day" , Denys Vlasenko , linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org, David Woodhouse , Linux Kernel Mailing List Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Kyle Moffett Subject: Re: [PATCH 09/30] mtd: Don't cast kmalloc() return value in drivers/mtd/maps/pmcmsp-flash.c Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:52:51 -0400 To: Jesper Juhl X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1448 Lines: 31 On Aug 25, 2007, at 20:36:32, Jesper Juhl wrote: > On 26/08/07, Robert P. J. Day wrote: >> technically, nothing. but if you're not going to use kcalloc() >> when you're explicitly allocating an array of identical objects >> (that you want zero-filled, as a bonus), then what's the point of >> ever having defined a kcalloc() routine in the first place? >> > I wonder a bit about that myself... > > I have found some other issues in that function that I want to fix, > so I'll be respinning the patch as a patch series instead - and why > not; I'll just go with kcalloc() and see what the maintainers have > to say, it's not like I personally care much one way or the other. I think the original reasoning behind kcalloc() was that it did some extra input checking, so that if the product of the two numbers overflowed, it would fail with NULL instead of allocating insufficient space. In the kernel it doesn't matter in practice since you MUST have additional checking on the size of allocated memory anyways, not even considering the fact that >PAGE_SIZE allocations are probably going to fail with decent frequency regardless. Cheers, Kyle Moffett - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/