On Wed, 2012-09-12 at 12:36 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:20:30 +0200 > Davidlohr Bueso <d...@gnu.org> wrote: > > > On Wed, 2012-09-12 at 12:10 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:35:19 +0200 > > > Davidlohr Bueso <d...@gnu.org> wrote: > > > > > > > Account for all properties when a and/or b are 0: > > > > gcd(0, 0) = 0 > > > > gcd(a, 0) = a > > > > gcd(0, b) = b > > > > > > > > Cc: sta...@vger.kernel.org > > > > > > Why cc:stable? If this patch fixes some known problem in the current > > > kernel then that really really should have been described in the > > > changelog. Always. Please. > > > > Ok, I will keep it in mind next time. No known problem (at least that I > > know of), but due to the nature of the potential bug, I thought that it > > was worth adding it to stable. > > OK. > > I'm not personally averse to fixing such problems in -stable, > particualrly in lib/ code. After all, people who take -stable kernels > will then change them and add drivers and backport changes from later > kernels, etc. They might be bitten by such a bug.
Yes, my thoughts exactly. > > > I'm scratching my head a bit at the patch though. What does gcd(0, 13) > mean? That 0 can be divided by 13 zero times, which is an integer > result? I wonder why any non-buggy code would do that.... > While I've been away from this kind of math for a while, based on the Euclid's algorithm, if r = a mod b, then gcd(a, b) = gcd(b, r), so: gcd(0, 13) = gcd(13, 0 mod 13) = gcd(13, 0) Since the GCD of a and b is "the largest integer that divides both a and b with no remainder", when r = 0, the algorithm will stop and therefore gcd(13, 0) = 13. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/sicp/book/node19.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
