On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 04:54:17PM +0100, Vasyl Gomonovych wrote: > This patch fixes the warning reported by smatch: > > fs/eventpoll.c:889 ep_item_poll() warn: variable dereferenced before check 'pt' ... and of course, that is all the analysis one might want - the tool has spoken. Except that the only thing proven is that the tool is either misused or just plain crappy. Callers of ep_item_poll() are easily found - it's static, so they all are in the same file. All four of them - if (ep_item_poll(epi, &pt, depth)) { revents = ep_item_poll(epi, &epq.pt, 1); if (ep_item_poll(epi, &pt, 1)) { revents = ep_item_poll(epi, &pt, 1); Figuring out why an address of a local variable or of a field thereof can never be NULL is left as an exercise for an introductory course on C. "Fixing warnings" is bloody wrong - warning (from any tool) is a heuristic pointing to a place that might be worth looking into. In cases when you've found a real problem with help from some tool, sure, go ahead and credit that tool in the commit message. Along with the description of the problem you've found.