[PATCH 3/5] xdiff: use size_t for buffer sizes
From: Jeff King <hidden>
Date: 2026-09-29 06:54:16
Subsystem:
the rest · Maintainer:
Linus Torvalds
An mmfile_t stores its size as a signed long, but the more natural type for a buffer size is size_t. This not only limits the size of entry we can hold, but also creates some possible integer overflow issues. For example, read_mmfile() checks that the file size fits in a size_t before allocating, but then assigns it to a long. Likewise, read_mmblob() and fill_mmfile() copy sizes from other types without checking that they fit. On LP64 systems like Linux, this is mostly academic. You could wrap to a negative long value, but you'd need an object that's 2^63 bytes, which is impractical. But on an LLP64 system like Windows, a 2^31+1-byte blob could perhaps cause mischief. We do prevent large values from entering the xdiff code due to MAX_XDIFF_SIZE (which is itself marked as unsigned, so we'd convert any negative "long" back to a large unsigned value). But if you ask for binary diffs, that negative long value could instead be converted to a huge 64-bit size_t when passed to memcmp(), diff_delta(), etc. So probably there are paths that can cause an out-of-bounds read, given the right set of options, but I didn't really dig for them. On a 32-bit system things are less clear. Because "long" and "size_t" have the same width, any time we implicitly convert to size_t, we should get back the original size (even if the intermediate "long" is itself negative). Probably iterating using a long could be a problem, but most of that happens inside xdiff, which is protected by MAX_XDIFF_SIZE (which, again, compares in the unsigned space). Let's just use the obvious size_t type for counting the bytes. I suspect you could still find truncation problems on LLP64 systems due to the use of "unsigned long" throughout the code, but that's a larger problem. This should at least nudge us in the right direction. Note that we have to update the printf format in emit_binary_diff_body() to accommodate the new type. Curiously it was using "%lu", even though the type was signed (I guess compiler printf-linting is happy enough if just the width of the format and the type match). Signed-off-by: Jeff King <redacted> --- diff.c | 2 +- xdiff/xdiff.h | 2 +- 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/diff.c b/diff.c
index 414532d09f..b4ac17f8ef 100644
--- a/diff.c
+++ b/diff.c@@ -3646,7 +3646,7 @@ static void emit_binary_diff_body(struct diff_options *o, data = delta; data_size = delta_size; } else { - char *s = xstrfmt("%lu", two->size); + char *s = xstrfmt("%"PRIuMAX, (uintmax_t)two->size); emit_diff_symbol(o, DIFF_SYMBOL_BINARY_DIFF_HEADER_LITERAL, s, strlen(s), 0); free(s);
diff --git a/xdiff/xdiff.h b/xdiff/xdiff.h
index 334eb436f6..8fa513fc4e 100644
--- a/xdiff/xdiff.h
+++ b/xdiff/xdiff.h@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ extern "C" { typedef struct s_mmfile { char *ptr; - long size; + size_t size; } mmfile_t; typedef struct s_xpparam {
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2.56.0.325.g545d7e68bc