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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst | 14 |
1 files changed, 10 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst b/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst index 0b418a5b243c..81e828c8313b 100644 --- a/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst +++ b/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.rst @@ -128,10 +128,16 @@ Follow these rules to keep your RCU code working properly: This sort of comparison occurs frequently when scanning RCU-protected circular linked lists. - Note that if checks for being within an RCU read-side - critical section are not required and the pointer is never - dereferenced, rcu_access_pointer() should be used in place - of rcu_dereference(). + Note that if the pointer comparison is done outside + of an RCU read-side critical section, and the pointer + is never dereferenced, rcu_access_pointer() should be + used in place of rcu_dereference(). In most cases, + it is best to avoid accidental dereferences by testing + the rcu_access_pointer() return value directly, without + assigning it to a variable. + + Within an RCU read-side critical section, there is little + reason to use rcu_access_pointer(). - The comparison is against a pointer that references memory that was initialized "a long time ago." The reason |