[addicted]

People aren't arguing kernel code must be complicated. People are arguing that dealing with pointers should be second nature to kernel developers, so the lines of code causing you and me congnitive overhead should be second nature to a kernel Dev.

[TickleSteve]

I'm an embedded/real-time/bare-metal softie with over 20 years experience.... I do this stuff all day, every day.

This code is inherently too complex. it should be simplified