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checkpatch: Don't emit spurious warnings about block comments
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In checkpatch we attempt to check for and warn about
block comments which start with /* or /** followed by a
non-blank. Unfortunately a bug in the regex meant that
we would incorrectly warn about comments starting with
"/**" with no following text:

  git show 9813dc6|./scripts/checkpatch.pl -
  WARNING: Block comments use a leading /* on a separate line
  #34: FILE: tests/libqtest.h:233:
  +/**

The sequence "/\*\*?" was intended to match either "/*" or "/**",
but Perl's semantics for '?' allow it to backtrack and try the
"matches 0 chars" option if the "matches 1 char" choice leads to
a failure of the rest of the regex to match.  Switch to "/\*\*?+"
which uses what perlre(1) calls the "possessive" quantifier form:
this means that if it matches the "/**" string it will not later
backtrack to matching just the "/*" prefix.

The other end of the regex is also wrong: it is attempting
to check for "/* or /** followed by something that isn't
just whitespace", but [ \t]*.+[ \t]* will match on pure
whitespace. This is less significant but means that a line
with just a comment-starter followed by trailing whitespace
will generate an incorrect warning about block comment style
as well as the correct error about trailing whitespace which
a different checkpatch test emits.

Fixes: 8c06fbd ("scripts/checkpatch.pl: Enforce multiline comment syntax")
Reported-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
Reported-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>
Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Message-id: 20190118165050.22270-1-peter.maydell@linaro.org
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pm215 committed Jan 29, 2019
1 parent 46a6603 commit b94e809
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 1 deletion.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion scripts/checkpatch.pl
Expand Up @@ -1624,7 +1624,7 @@ sub process {

# Block comments use /* on a line of its own
if ($rawline !~ m@^\+.*/\*.*\*/[ \t]*$@ && #inline /*...*/
$rawline =~ m@^\+.*/\*\*?[ \t]*.+[ \t]*$@) { # /* or /** non-blank
$rawline =~ m@^\+.*/\*\*?+[ \t]*[^ \t]@) { # /* or /** non-blank
WARN("Block comments use a leading /* on a separate line\n" . $herecurr);
}

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