Hi Philipp, On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 12:48:26PM +0100, Philipp Hahn wrote: > While doing some static code analysis I stumbled over a common pattern, > where IS_ERR() is combined with a NULL check. For that there is > IS_ERR_OR_NULL(). > > I've written a Coccinelle patch to find and patch those instances. > The patches follow grouped by subsystem. > > Patches 55-58 may be dropped as they have a (minor?) semantic change: > They use WARN_ON() or WARN_ON_ONCE(), but only in the IS_ERR() path, not > for the NULL check. Iff it is okay to print the warning also for NULL, > then the patches can be applied. > > While generating the patch set `checkpatch` complained about mixing > [un]likely() with IS_ERR_OR_NULL(), which already uses likely() > internally. I found and fixed several locations, where that combination > has been used.
Thanks for the patchset. However, I think we need a explanation for why switching to IS_ERR_OR_NULL() is an improvement over the existing code. IMHO, the necessity of IS_ERR_OR_NULL() often highlights a confusing or flawed API design. It usually implies that the caller is unsure whether a failure results in an error pointer or a NULL pointer. Rather than doing a treewide conversion of this pattern, I believe it would be much more meaningful to review these instances case-by-case and fix the underlying APIs or caller logic instead. Additionally, a treewide refactoring like this has the practical drawback of creating unnecessary merge conflicts when backporting to stable trees. Regards, Kuan-Wei
