Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] add QSORT

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 15:36:24 -0700

René Scharfe <[email-masked]> writes:

> Add the macro QSORT, a convenient wrapper for qsort(3) that infers the
> size of the array elements and supports the convention of initializing
> empty arrays with a NULL pointer, which we use in some places.
>
> Calling qsort(3) directly with a NULL pointer is undefined -- even with
> an element count of zero -- and allows the compiler to optimize away any
> following NULL checks.  Using the macro avoids such surprises.
>
> Add a semantic patch as well to demonstrate the macro's usage and to
> automate the transformation of trivial cases.
>
> Signed-off-by: Rene Scharfe <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  contrib/coccinelle/qsort.cocci | 19 +++++++++++++++++++
>  git-compat-util.h              |  8 ++++++++
>  2 files changed, 27 insertions(+)
>  create mode 100644 contrib/coccinelle/qsort.cocci

The direct calls to qsort(3) that this series leaves behind are
interesting.

1. builtin/index-pack.c has this:

	if (1 < opts->anomaly_nr)
		qsort(opts->anomaly, opts->anomaly_nr, sizeof(uint32_t), cmp_uint32);

where opts->anomaly is coming from pack.h:

    struct pack_idx_option {
            unsigned flags;
            ...
            int anomaly_alloc, anomaly_nr;
            uint32_t *anomaly;
    };

I cannot quite see how the automated conversion misses it?  It's not
like base and nmemb are type-restricted in the rule (they are both
just "expression"s).

2. builtin/shortlog.c has this:

	qsort(log->list.items, log->list.nr, sizeof(struct string_list_item),
	      log->summary ? compare_by_counter : compare_by_list);

where log->list is coming from shortlog.h:

    struct shortlog {
            struct string_list list;
    };

and string-list.h says:

    struct string_list {
            struct string_list_item *items;
            unsigned int nr, alloc;
            ...
    };

which seems to be a good candidate for this rule:

    type T;
    T *base;
    expression nmemb, compar;
    @@
    - qsort(base, nmemb, sizeof(T), compar);
    + QSORT(base, nmemb, compar);

if we take "T == struct string_list_item".

3. builtin/show-branch.c does this:

    qsort(ref_name + bottom, top - bottom, sizeof(ref_name[0]),
          compare_ref_name);

where ref_name[] is a file-scope global:

    static char *ref_name[MAX_REVS + 1];

and top and bottom are plain integers.  The sizeof() does not take
the size of *base, so it is understandable that this does not get
automatically converted.

It seems that some calls to this function _could_ send the same top
and bottom, asking for 0 element array to be sorted, by the way.

Thanks for an amusing read.