Adrian Bunk wrote:
On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 11:21:58PM +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:
There are two cases: 1. NULL is impossible, the check is superfluous 2. this was an actual bug
In the first case, my patch doesn't do any harm (a superfluous isn't a real bug).
In the second case, it fixed a bug.
It might be a bug not many people hit because it might be in some error path of some esoteric driver.
If a maintainer of a well-maintained subsystem like i2c says "The check is superfluous." that's the perfect solution.
But in less maintained parts of the kernel, even a low possibility that it fixes a possible bug is IMHO worth making such a riskless patch.
--- I'd agree in [al]most any part of the kernel. Unless it is extremely time critical code, subroutines should expect possible garbage from their callers.
Just because it may be perfect today doesn't mean someone down the line won't call the routine with less than perfect parameters.
It used to be called "defensive" programming.
However, in this case, if the author is _certain_ the pointer can never be NULL, than an "ASSERT(card!=NULL);" might be appropriate, where ASSERT is a macro that normally compiles in the check, but could compile to "nothing" for embedded or kernels that aren't being developed in.
-linda
Thanks,
Jean Delvare
cu Adrian
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