tree 4c010d4c4220c9523342fb0daac90a433f36b53e
parent 9442e691e4aec85eba43ac60a3e77c77fd2e73a4
author Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com> 1159684040 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org> 1159688359 -0700

[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>