coccinelle matching of identifiers

From: Lukas Wunner
Date: Mon May 06 2024 - 13:53:28 EST


Dear coccinelle maintainers,

Linux kernel commit 5c6ca9d93665 ("X.509: Introduce scope-based
x509_certificate allocation"), which is queued for v6.10 in this repo ...

https://git.kernel.org/herbert/cryptodev-2.6/c/5c6ca9d93665

.. triggers scripts/coccinelle/null/eno.cocci:

./crypto/asymmetric_keys/x509_cert_parser.c:69:9-15: ERROR: allocation function on line 68 returns NULL not ERR_PTR on failure
./fs/gfs2/inode.c:1850:6-12: ERROR: allocation function on line 1842 returns NULL not ERR_PTR on failure
./fs/smb/client/cifsfs.c:1186:6-12: ERROR: allocation function on line 1173 returns NULL not ERR_PTR on failure

The first of these three errors is newly introduced by the above-linked
commit, the other two already existed before. All are false-positives.

I would like to silence the newly-introduced false-positive and have
attempted to do so using the small patch below.

However the result is that *only* the newly-introduced false-positive is
found and the other two are no longer found. So the other way round than
what I'm aiming for.

I find this bewildering. What am I doing wrong?

FWIW, coccinelle version is 1.1.1.

The newly introduced false-positive is triggered by the statement:

assume(!IS_ERR(cert));

Which is a macro that expands to:

do { if (!!IS_ERR(cert)) __builtin_unreachable(); } while(0);

The macro gives the compiler a hint that variable "cert" is not an error
pointer, which prevents the compiler from adding an unnecessary check
for that condition.

Thanks!

Lukas

-- >8 --

diff --git a/scripts/coccinelle/null/eno.cocci b/scripts/coccinelle/null/eno.cocci
index 7107d6c8db9e..79112d51bee8 100644
--- a/scripts/coccinelle/null/eno.cocci
+++ b/scripts/coccinelle/null/eno.cocci
@@ -26,10 +26,12 @@ x = \(kmalloc\|kzalloc\|kcalloc\|kmem_cache_alloc\|kmem_cache_zalloc\|kmem_cache
@r depends on !patch exists@
expression x,E;
position p1,p2;
+identifier assume;
@@

*x = \(kmalloc@p1\|kzalloc@p1\|kcalloc@p1\|kmem_cache_alloc@p1\|kmem_cache_zalloc@p1\|kmem_cache_alloc_node@p1\|kmalloc_node@p1\|kzalloc_node@p1\)(...)
... when != x = E
+ when != assume
* IS_ERR@p2(x)

@script:python depends on org@