Re: [PATCH] string: Improve the generic strlcpy() implementation

[Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>]

On Mon, Oct 05 2015, Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> wrote:

> * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 8:43 PM, Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@ezchip.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Please pull the following changes for 4.3 from:
>> >
>> >   git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/cmetcalf/linux-tile.git strscpy
>> 
>> So I finally pulled it. I like the patch, I like the new interface,
>> but despite that I wasn't really sure if I wanted to pull it in - thus
>> the long delay of me just seeing this in my list of pending pulls for
>> almost a month, but never really getting to the point where I decided
>> I want to commit to it.
>
> Interesting. I noticed that strscpy() says this in its comments:
>
>  * In addition, the implementation is robust to the string changing out
>  * from underneath it, unlike the current strlcpy() implementation.

Apologies for beating a dead horse, but:

		c = *(unsigned long *)(src+res);
		if (has_zero(c, &data, &constants)) {
			data = prep_zero_mask(c, data, &constants);
			data = create_zero_mask(data);
			*(unsigned long *)(dest+res) = c & zero_bytemask(data);
			return res + find_zero(data);
		}
		*(unsigned long *)(dest+res) = c;

I wonder whether an insane compiler might actually reload c before
storing to dest+res, so that we'd have exactly the same problem of
embedded nul characters? And similarly in the byte-by-byte case:

		char c;

		c = src[res];
		dest[res] = c;
		if (!c)
			return res;

(yes, there's a store between the load and the test, and the compiler
probably can't know or prove that src and dest don't alias - but we're
storing c, so a sufficiently clever _and_ insane compiler could test
src[res]). Would READ_ONCE be justified?

Rasmus