Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

Posted Jul 20, 2009 23:53 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670)
Parent article: Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

The fact that those changes make it into the kernel in the first place is slightly worrying. Should an unchecked pointer deference not be caught with a static code checker? What about Sparse, isn't that run routinely? Perhaps automatic comments could be added to code already at the mailing list publication stage.

Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

Posted Jul 21, 2009 0:00 UTC (Tue) by spender (guest, #23067) [Link]

A static checker is useless unless someone actually bothers to fix the things it reports.

It's already been agreed upon that static checkers can find these bugs, yet clearly they're being produced faster than they're fixed.

-Brad

Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

Posted Jul 21, 2009 0:04 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Sparse doesn't check for it yet. Perhaps it should. But please realize that it's not just an "unchecked code dereference", it's a dereference before check.