Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!agate!ucbvax!ulysses!smb
From: smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Referencing NULL pointers
Message-ID: <11773@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 10 Jul 89 09:05:45 GMT
References: <19367@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 11

In article <19367@paris.ics.uci.edu>, hadley@ics.uci.edu (T.S. Hadley) writes:
>    By NULL pointer referencing I mean: consider the C frags:
>       ...
>       TYPE	*t = (TYPE *) 0;	/* typedef struct { ... } TYPE; */
>       if(t->field == 0)
>       ...

NULL pointer dereferencing (the correct term, btw) is illegal.  That
it works on some machines is coincidental.  I regard the segmentation
fault on the Suns as a useful feature of their implementation of
the system, as it catches bugs as shown above.