Author: Julia Lawall <Julia.Lawall@lip6.fr> for_each_matching_node performs an of_node_get on each iteration, so a break out of the loop requires an of_node_put. A simplified version of the semantic patch that fixes this problem is as follows (http://coccinelle.lip6.fr): // @@ expression e,e1; local idexpression np; @@ for_each_matching_node(np, e1) { … when != of_node_put(np) when != e = …