libmisc: Add safer allocation macros

This macros have several benefits over the standard functions:

-  The type of the allocated object (not the pointer) is specified as an
   argument, which improves readability:
   -  It is directly obvious what is the type of the object just by
      reading the macro call.
   -  It allows grepping for all allocations of a given type.

   This is admittedly similar to using sizeof() to get the size of the
   object, but we'll see why this is better.

-  In the case of reallocation macros, an extra check is performed to
   make sure that the previous pointer was compatible with the allocated
   type, which can avoid some mistakes.

-  The cast is performed automatically, with a pointer type derived from
   the type of the object.  This is the best point of this macro, since
   it does an automatic cast, where there's no chance of typos.

   Usually, programmers have to decide whether to cast or not the result
   of malloc(3).  Casts usually hide warnings, so are to be avoided.
   However, these functions already return a void *, so a cast doesn't
   really add much danger.  Moreover, a cast can even add warnings in
   this exceptional case, if the type of the cast is different than the
   type of the assigned pointer.  Performing a manual cast is still not
   perfect, since there are chances that a mistake will be done, and
   even ignoring accidents, they clutter code, hurting readability.
   And now we have a cast that is synced with sizeof.

-  Whenever the type of the object changes, since we perform an explicit
   cast to the old type, there will be a warning due to type mismatch in
   the assignment, so we'll be able to see all lines that are affected
   by such a change.  This is especially important, since changing the
   type of a variable and missing to update an allocation call far away
   from the declaration is easy, and the consequences can be quite bad.

Cc: Valentin V. Bartenev <vbartenev@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>

diff --git a/lib/alloc.h b/lib/alloc.h
index 979588b4731b5d85876d5a720314a84a12e1c606..64984f3a8a2ce2c4feacf6bb5e9ca869958c77aa 100644 (file)
--- a/lib/alloc.h
+++ b/lib/alloc.h
@@ -20,6 +20,46 @@
 #include "defines.h"
 
 
+#define ALLOCARRAY(n, type)    ((type *) alloca(sizeof(type) * (n)))
+#define CALLOC(n, type)        ((type *) calloc(n, sizeof(type)))
+#define XCALLOC(n, type)       ((type *) xcalloc(n, sizeof(type)))
+#define MALLOCARRAY(n, type)   ((type *) mallocarray(n, sizeof(type)))
+#define XMALLOCARRAY(n, type)  ((type *) xmallocarray(n, sizeof(type)))
+
+#define ALLOCA(type)           ALLOCARRAY(1, type)
+#define MALLOC(type)           MALLOCARRAY(1, type)
+#define XMALLOC(type)          XMALLOCARRAY(1, type)
+#define REALLOC(ptr, type)     REALLOCARRAY(ptr, 1, type)
+#define REALLOCF(ptr, type)    REALLOCARRAYF(ptr, 1, type)
+
+#define REALLOCARRAY(ptr, n, type)                                            \
+({                                                                            \
+       __auto_type  p_ = (ptr);                                              \
+                                                                              \
+       static_assert(__builtin_types_compatible_p(typeof(p_), type *), "");  \
+                                                                              \
+       (type *) reallocarray(p_, n, sizeof(type));                           \
+})
+
+#define REALLOCARRAYF(ptr, n, type)                                           \
+({                                                                            \
+       __auto_type  p_ = (ptr);                                              \
+                                                                              \
+       static_assert(__builtin_types_compatible_p(typeof(p_), type *), "");  \
+                                                                              \
+       (type *) reallocarrayf(p_, n, sizeof(type));                          \
+})
+
+#define XREALLOCARRAY(ptr, n, type)                                           \
+({                                                                            \
+       __auto_type  p_ = (ptr);                                              \
+                                                                              \
+       static_assert(__builtin_types_compatible_p(typeof(p_), type *), "");  \
+                                                                              \
+       (type *) xreallocarray(p_, n, sizeof(type));                          \
+})
+
+
 ATTR_MALLOC(free)
 inline void *xmalloc(size_t size);
 ATTR_MALLOC(free)