tree d207a6fd49dda02b7eb1e9a3e97bdfa15bf49d4f
parent e8897e4fe8f27d407b1e00ee0410fd3ec396275c
author Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com> 1581537151 -0600
committer Miguel Ojeda <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@gmail.com> 1583529487 +0100

auxdisplay: charlcd: replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
introduced in C99:

struct foo {
        int stuff;
        struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by
this change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator
may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of
zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
Signed-off-by: Miguel Ojeda <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@gmail.com>