Re: [PATCH] staging: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

From: Adham.Abozaeid
Date: Thu Feb 20 2020 - 14:04:55 EST


Hi Gustavo

On 2/20/20 6:29 AM, Gustavo A. R. Silva wrote:
> The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
> extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
> variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
> introduced in C99:
>
> struct foo {
> int stuff;
> struct boo array[];
> };
>
> By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
> in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
> will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
> inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.
>
> Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by
> this change:
>
> "Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator
> may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of
> zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]
>
> This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.
>
> [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
> [2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
> [3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")
>
> Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> static void cfg_scan_result(enum scan_event scan_event,
> diff --git a/drivers/staging/wilc1000/spi.c b/drivers/staging/wilc1000/spi.c
> index 44f7d48851b5..11653ac118cd 100644
> --- a/drivers/staging/wilc1000/spi.c
> +++ b/drivers/staging/wilc1000/spi.c
> @@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ struct wilc_spi_read_rsp_data {
> u8 status;
> u8 resp_header;
> u8 resp_data[4];
> - u8 crc[0];
> + u8 crc[];
> } __packed;
more zero-length arrays in wilc1000, spi.c, struct wilc_spi_cmd, and in fw.h