On 8/21/26 18:09, Anshuman Tewari wrote: > Thanks David, agreed — strdup() is overkill here for a single-use > parse, and dropping it is the right call. > > One small consideration on the approach: working on argv[0] in place > means strsep() will overwrite the : separator with '\0', so the > original string (e.g. "khugepaged:anon") ends up truncated after > parsing. Nothing today reads argv[0] again afterward, so it's safe as > things stand, but it does mean correctness quietly depends on that > staying true — a future change that logs argv[0], re-parses it, or > echoes it back in an error/usage message would get the mutated version > instead of what the user actually typed. > > If we'd rather not rely on that invariant, an alternative that still > avoids strdup()/free() entirely: copy the type argument into a small > fixed-size stack buffer (with a bounds check against its length first) > and run strsep() on that copy instead of on argv[0] directly. Same > benefit as your version — no allocation, nothing to free, no > NULL-check needed — but argv[0] itself stays untouched. > > Happy to write this up as a v2 if it seems worthwhile, or if you think > relying on "nothing downstream needs argv[0]" is fine as-is, I'm okay > going with your version too. Your call.
I don't think we have to worry about other such argv[0] users. If they ever appear, basic testing would reveal them. -- Cheers, David
