[PATCH][next] chrome: cros_ec_chardev: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

From: Gustavo A. R. Silva
Date: Fri Mar 20 2020 - 19:15:48 EST


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>
---
drivers/platform/chrome/cros_ec_chardev.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/platform/chrome/cros_ec_chardev.c b/drivers/platform/chrome/cros_ec_chardev.c
index b51ab24055f3..e0bce869c49a 100644
--- a/drivers/platform/chrome/cros_ec_chardev.c
+++ b/drivers/platform/chrome/cros_ec_chardev.c
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ struct ec_event {
struct list_head node;
size_t size;
u8 event_type;
- u8 data[0];
+ u8 data[];
};

static int ec_get_version(struct cros_ec_dev *ec, char *str, int maxlen)
--
2.23.0