The current structure definition of the ion system heap involves a zero sized array:

struct ion_system_heap { struct ion_heap heap; struct ion_page_pool *pools[0]; };

It looks odd but it’s valid. The example at the link gives an idea why this is useful. The structure can act as a header and the zero length array represents the payload. The payload can be of variable size but it can still be represented in the structure. Ion’s use, while valid, is a bit unnecessary since the number of pools is technically known at compile time. This came in as an ‘optimization’ a few years ago.

Someone submitted a patch to Ion to extend the page pooling feature for cached pages in addition to uncached pools, a valuable optimization. This changed the structure to

struct ion_system_heap { struct ion_heap heap; struct ion_page_pool *uncached_pools[0]; struct ion_page_pool *cached_pools[0]; };

At first glance, this looks okay. The code compiles without warnings. Just duplicating another structure member. But this is duplicating a zero length array. The zero length array is supposed to go at the end of a structure. And what does it mean to have two zero length arrays?

I ran this question by a few people and the general conclusion was this is not valid. The actual behavior is about what you would expect from a compiler (or maybe not):

$ cat foo.c #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> struct bad_times { int a; char *b; int *c[0]; int *d[0]; }; int main() { struct bad_times *uh_oh; uh_oh = malloc(sizeof(*uh_oh) + 4 + 5); printf(">>> a %p

", &uh_oh->a); printf(">>> b %p

", &uh_oh->b); printf(">>> c %p

", &uh_oh->c); printf(">>> d %p

", &uh_oh->d); } $ gcc foo.c $ ./a.out >>> a 0xce1010 >>> b 0xce1018 >>> c 0xce1020 >>> d 0xce1020 $

Yes, the two zero size entries alias to the same address. The conclusion is that since this is undefined behavior the compiler can go ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and do whatever it wants. The only way to get any kind of warning is to pass -pedantic to get “warning: ISO C forbids zero-size array”, no warning about having two of them.

C makes it very easy to get things subtly wrong. Yet another item to add to your code review checklist. Better yet, don’t use zero size arrays unless you really have to.