On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 02:38:23PM +0800, Xichao Zhao wrote: > Use the IS_ERR_OR_NULL() helper instead of open-coding a NULL and > an error pointer checks to simplify the code and improve readability. IS_ERR_OR_NULL() is almost always a bad idea. ext4_bread() *is* one of the cases where NULL is a legitimate return values that is not an error - it indicates a hole in a sparse file (BTW, not sure if it can legitimately occur in a directory); the thing is, among the functions that can return both NULL and ERR_PTR() the meaning assigned to NULL varies a lot; so much that "ERR_PTR() or NULL" has no good semantics. Most of the uses are either sloppy code from somebody who couldn't be arsed to find out whether it's pointer-or-NULL or pointer-or-ERR_PTR() or misguided "defensive" crap. Any caller that is *not* of that sort is drowning in a pile of garbage. Let's not breed that...
