Re: [RFC PATCH] type safe allocator

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
>
> I wonder why we don't have type safe object allocators a-la new() in
> C++ or g_new() in glib?
> 
>   fooptr = k_new(struct foo, GFP_KERNEL);

I would object to this if only because of the horrible name.

C++ is not a good language to take ideas from, and "new()" was not it's 
best feature to begin with. "k_new()" is just disgusting.

I'd call it something like "alloc_struct()" instead, which tells you 
exactly what it's all about. Especially since we try to avoid typedefs in 
the kernel, and as a result, it's basically almost always a struct thing.

That said, I'm not at all sure it's worth it. Especially not with all the 
various variations on a theme (zeroed, arrays, etc etc).

Quite frankly, I suspect you would be better off just instrumenting 
"sparse" instead, and matching up the size of the allocation with the type 
it gets assigned to.

		Linus