Introduce a handy list_first_entry macro

There are many places in the kernel where the construction like

   foo = list_entry(head->next, struct foo_struct, list);

are used.
The code might look more descriptive and neat if using the macro

   list_first_entry(head, type, member) \
             list_entry((head)->next, type, member)

Here is the macro itself and the examples of its usage in the generic code.
 If it will turn out to be useful, I can prepare the set of patches to
inject in into arch-specific code, drivers, networking, etc.

Signed-off-by: Pavel Emelianov <xemul@openvz.org>
Signed-off-by: Kirill Korotaev <dev@openvz.org>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Cc: Zach Brown <zach.brown@oracle.com>
Cc: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org>
Cc: John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: john stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Ram Pai <linuxram@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/list.h b/include/linux/list.h
index f9d71eab05ee..9202703be2a4 100644
--- a/include/linux/list.h
+++ b/include/linux/list.h
@@ -426,6 +426,17 @@ static inline void list_splice_init_rcu(struct list_head *list,
         container_of(ptr, type, member)
 
 /**
+ * list_first_entry - get the first element from a list
+ * @ptr:        the list head to take the element from.
+ * @type:       the type of the struct this is embedded in.
+ * @member:     the name of the list_struct within the struct.
+ *
+ * Note, that list is expected to be not empty.
+ */
+#define list_first_entry(ptr, type, member) \
+        list_entry((ptr)->next, type, member)
+
+/**
  * list_for_each        -       iterate over a list
  * @pos:        the &struct list_head to use as a loop cursor.
  * @head:       the head for your list.