On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 11:33:30AM +0100, Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
On Fre, 2010-02-19 at 13:10 +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 09:29:05AM +0100, Clemens Ladisch wrote:
This doesn't change anything, but I think it makes the code clearer. It silences a smatch warning: sound/pci/oxygen/oxygen_mixer.c +91 dac_mute_put(7) warn: add some parenthesis here?
That message doesn't say why some parentheses should be added. And it's a question; how do I give it the answer "no"? :-)
- changed = !value->value.integer.value[0] != chip->dac_mute;
- changed = (!value->value.integer.value[0]) != chip->dac_mute;
This doesn't look any clearer to me; I don't think that the unary negation operator could be thought to have lower precedence than "!=".
Well, it's hard to argue that it's more ambiguous. :P
But it doesn't make the code clearer - unless you are a C novice. Unary operators generally bind stronger than others - be it "+", "-", "!", "~", "*". I would expect kernel programmers to know that (and I don't assume in-depth knowledge of operator precedence rules).
Why does smatch warn about this combination? Do such errors actually happen:
Yep. I have made some myself when writing smatch.
For example here are some related bugs in the current kernel.
drivers/staging/rtl8192u/ieee80211/ieee80211_wx.c 721 if (!ext->ext_flags & IW_ENCODE_EXT_GROUP_KEY &&
Well, I see potential bugs here and the if() should have been a) if (!(ext->ext_flags & IW_ENCODE_EXT_GROUP_KEY) &&
Yep. This is clearly what the code should say.
The problem in the original code is that IW_ENCODE_EXT_GROUP_KEY is not equal to either 1 or to 0. (So that means the condition in the original code is always false).
b) if (!ext->ext_flags && IW_ENCODE_EXT_GROUP_KEY && So you one has to look at the driver for the correct fix (and perhaps both of above are wrong).
And I don't see what parenthesis around a logical negations can help with the above error example.
Basically often when people write: if (!foo == bar) { ...
What they mean is: if (!(foo == bar)) { ...
But if they really do mean the original code they could just write this so it's clear to everyone: if ((!foo) == bar) { ...
To me it's like "==" vs "=". Of course, every programmer knows the what the difference is but it helps to have gcc warn about adding the extra parenthesis. Maybe I suck, but it definitely has helped me in then past.
I don't have strong feelings about this btw. The original code in oxygyn_mixer works fine. I just was making some changes to smatch and that was a new warning today. There is no method to my madness.
regards, dan carpenter
Bernd
Bernd Petrovitsch Email : bernd@petrovitsch.priv.at LUGA : http://www.luga.at