KernelTrap: Debating Coding Style

“The Linux kernel coding style document was recently upgraded to
say ‘the preferred form for passing a size of a struct is the
following: p = kmalloc(sizeof(*p), ...);.’ Russell
King disagreed with this suggestion, listing several reasons it was
problematic. He was quickly joined by others including Al Viro,
Robert Love, and Alan Cox, who agreed and added additional reasons
why this coding convention could be problematic, suggesting instead
to use ‘p = kmalloc(sizeof(struct foo), ...).’ The
reasons cited included the difficulty in grepping for such
allocations and initializations, confusion over the fact the
sizeof(*p) is the size of for example a void
*, not the full space for the object allocated and
overall readability…”

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