On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 03:54:59AM +0200, наб wrote: > According to Greg, in the context of magic numbers as defined in > magic-number.rst, "the tty layer should not need this and I'll gladly > take patches" > > Ref: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-doc/YyMlovoskUcHLEb7@xxxxxxxxx/ Well, I would disagree with Greg K-H on this --- but I haven't been tty maintainer in well over a decade. Assuming code is Bug-Free(tm), sure, it's not necessary. But there is any kind of memory bug (e.g., a corrupted pointer, a use-after free, some other structure corruption), this catches the problem earlier rather than later, and it's a light-weight to do a quick sanity check. It has certainly caught problems in the past, and I still use this programming technique in programs that I do maintain, such as e2fsprogs. But it's not a big deal either way, - Ted P.S. BTW, I didn't make up this technique; it's a program pattern first used in Multics.
