On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 12:41 AM David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > + > + if (S_ISREG(file_inode(in)->i_mode) || > + S_ISBLK(file_inode(in)->i_mode)) { This really feels fundamentally wrong to me. If block and regular files have this limit, they should have their own splice_read() function that implements that limit. Not make everybody else check it. IOW, this should be a separate function ("block_splice_read()" or whatever), not inside a generic function that other users use. The zero size checking looks fine, although I wondered about that too. Some special files do traditionally have special meanings for zero-sized reads (as in "packet boundary"). But I suspect that isn't an issue for splice, and perhaps more importantly, I think the same rule should be in place: special files that want special rules shouldn't be using this generic function directly then. Linus