On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 01:11:33PM -0400, Michael Wu wrote: > On Thursday 04 October 2007 11:19, John W. Linville wrote: > > > The reason why BUG_ON exists is to catch bugs that happen, although > > > they Should Never Happen (tm) ;) > > > > Precisely. > No really, this bug will never happen. This is function is merely a helper > function which is called from interface removal code (where the interface > *has* to be down) or from changing the interface type (which ensures that the > interface is down first). There are an unlimited number of bugs which Should > Never Happen. That doesn't mean we should start adding BUG_ONs for every > single one of them. That gives some sort of protection against cosmic rays > flipping bits, but down here on earth, it's bloat. Falling back on bloat as an argument against a BUG_ON in a configuration path seems a bit weak. :-) Programming with assertions (and BUG_ON is a form of that) is generally a good practice. Almost any book or other source on good programming practices will agree. Yes, it can be overdone. But I don't really think that is the case here, since the check is relatively inexpensive and the consequence should it ever *somehow* happen could be a something wierd (crash, corruption, etc) w/o any other indication of what occured. Anyway, the point is probably moot in this case if there is no great objection to the alternative patch I proposed. John -- John W. Linville linville@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
