Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:08:56 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Xi Wang <xi.wang@gmail.com>, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>,
        Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>,
        Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>, Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC v2] slab: introduce kmalloc_array
Message-Id: <20120209150856.7f97d28e.akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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On Thu, 9 Feb 2012 14:42:49 -0800 (PST)
David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 9 Feb 2012, Xi Wang wrote:
> 
> > This patch introduces a kmalloc_array() wrapper that performs integer
> > overflow checking without zeroing the memory.
> > 
> > Suggested-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> > Suggested-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
> > Signed-off-by: Xi Wang <xi.wang@gmail.com>
> 
> Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
> 
> assuming there's at least one new user or one existing user that can be 
> modified to use the new interface and this won't just sit around not being 
> used.

The need is there - I've whined about the absence of kmalloc_array()
maybe 3 times in the past year.

Often kcalloc() is suitable - quite a lot of arrays which are sized
based on a userspace-provided dimension are also zeroed out.  For some
reason.

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