linux function

[alfie nsugh]

I don't understand what this return means, the parenthesis mean casting
but what then would the braces mean. I am so confused. The code is from
https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/include/linux/file.h#L55

I am trying to understand why I'm getting an error in my code that uses sendfile
so I thought if I could figure out how sendfile worked I could see where it goes
wrong, or it'll make me able to replicate the program and put it in cgdb, and see where the error occurs but I'm getting stuck.

static inline struct fd __to_fd(unsigned long v)
{
return (struct fd){(struct file *)(v & ~3),v & 3};
}

[dutch]

The function is very low-level. It is, apparently, using an unsigned long to hold what is basically an address (pointer value) but where the least-significant two bits (perhaps always zeroes in the original pointer value) are being used for flags.

The syntax you are confused about is a cast to a struct with the initializers for the struct inside the braces. The struct has two elements. The first element in the comma-separated list in the braces is v with the lowest two bits zeroed and converted to a file*. This presumably recovers the original address, which is used to initialize the file* in fd. The second element is just the last two bits of v, which hold the flags.

struct fd looks like this:

struct fd {
	struct file *file;
	unsigned int flags;
};
#define FDPUT_FPUT       1
#define FDPUT_POS_UNLOCK 2 

[alfie nsugh]

wow, it makes complete sense now, thank you so much for your input.

[dutch]

No problem.

But the need to reverse-engineer a system library function in order to track down a bug is unusual. Do you suspect that sendfile itself has a bug? If not, you should carefully read its spec to ensure you're using it correctly and then concentrate on your own code.

sendfile: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/sendfile.2.html

[alfie nsugh]

It wasn't a bug in sendfile I used mkdir first, but I gave it 0644 as permission, which was incorrect. You should only use 0644 for files not for directories. And sendfile as a result didn't have the correct permissions to send the file