Linux: Debating Coding Style

Posted by tadelste on Sep 22, 2005 6:19 AM EDT
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The Linux kernel coding style document was recently upgraded to say "the preferred form for passing a size of a struct is the following: p = kmalloc(sizeof(*p), ...);". Russell King [interview] disagreed with this suggestion, listing several reasons it was problematic. He was quickly joined by others including Al Viro, Robert Love [interview] and Alan Cox [interview], who agreed and added additional reasons why this coding convention could be problematic, suggesting instead to use "p = kmalloc(sizeof(struct foo), ...)". The reasons cited included the difficulty in grepping for such allocations and initializations, confusion over the fact the sizeof(*p) is the size of for example a void *, not the full space for the object allocated and overall readability.

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