The advantage of kcalloc is, that will prevent integer overflows which could result from the multiplication of number of elements and size and it is also a bit nicer to read. The semantic patch that makes this change is available in https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/11/25/107 Signed-off-by: Thomas Meyer <thomas@xxxxxxxx> --- diff -u -p a/fs/cifs/cifssmb.c b/fs/cifs/cifssmb.c --- a/fs/cifs/cifssmb.c 2011-11-13 11:07:56.343959560 +0100 +++ b/fs/cifs/cifssmb.c 2011-11-28 19:47:15.006997976 +0100 @@ -2140,7 +2140,7 @@ cifs_async_writev(struct cifs_writedata goto async_writev_out; /* 1 iov per page + 1 for header */ - iov = kzalloc((wdata->nr_pages + 1) * sizeof(*iov), GFP_NOFS); + iov = kcalloc(wdata->nr_pages + 1, sizeof(*iov), GFP_NOFS); if (iov == NULL) { rc = -ENOMEM; goto async_writev_out; -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-cifs" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html