From: "Gustavo A. R. Silva" <gustavo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: gcov: gcc_4_7: replace zero-length array with flexible-array member The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2], introduced in C99: struct foo { int stuff; struct boo array[]; }; By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on. Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by this change: "Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1] This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle. [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html [2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21 [3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour") Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200213152241.GA877@embeddedor Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/gcov/gcc_4_7.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) --- a/kernel/gcov/gcc_4_7.c~gcov-gcc_4_7-replace-zero-length-array-with-flexible-array-member +++ a/kernel/gcov/gcc_4_7.c @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ struct gcov_fn_info { unsigned int ident; unsigned int lineno_checksum; unsigned int cfg_checksum; - struct gcov_ctr_info ctrs[0]; + struct gcov_ctr_info ctrs[]; }; /** _