[PATCH] kmemdup: introduce
One of idiomatic ways to duplicate a region of memory is
dst = kmalloc(len, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!dst)
return -ENOMEM;
memcpy(dst, src, len);
which is neat code except a programmer needs to write size twice. Which
sometimes leads to mistakes. If len passed to kmalloc is smaller that len
passed to memcpy, it's straight overwrite-beyond-end. If len passed to
memcpy is smaller than len passed to kmalloc, it's either a) legit
behaviour ;-), or b) cloned buffer will contain garbage in second half.
Slight trolling of commit lists shows several duplications bugs
done exactly because of diverged lenghts:
Linux:
[CRYPTO]: Fix memcpy/memset args.
[PATCH] memcpy/memset fixes
OpenBSD:
kerberosV/src/lib/asn1: der_copy.c:1.4
If programmer is given only one place to play with lengths, I believe, such
mistakes could be avoided.
With kmemdup, the snippet above will be rewritten as:
dst = kmemdup(src, len, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!dst)
return -ENOMEM;
This also leads to smaller code (kzalloc effect). Quick grep shows
200+ places where kmemdup() can be used.
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/include/linux/string.h b/include/linux/string.h
index e4c7558..4f69ef9 100644
--- a/include/linux/string.h
+++ b/include/linux/string.h
@@ -99,6 +99,7 @@
#endif
extern char *kstrdup(const char *s, gfp_t gfp);
+extern void *kmemdup(const void *src, size_t len, gfp_t gfp);
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
diff --git a/mm/util.c b/mm/util.c
index 73684792..e14fa84 100644
--- a/mm/util.c
+++ b/mm/util.c
@@ -40,6 +40,24 @@
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(kstrdup);
+/**
+ * kmemdup - duplicate region of memory
+ *
+ * @src: memory region to duplicate
+ * @len: memory region length
+ * @gfp: GFP mask to use
+ */
+void *kmemdup(const void *src, size_t len, gfp_t gfp)
+{
+ void *p;
+
+ p = ____kmalloc(len, gfp);
+ if (p)
+ memcpy(p, src, len);
+ return p;
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL(kmemdup);
+
/*
* strndup_user - duplicate an existing string from user space
*