Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Subject: null references & dereferencing null pointers
Message-ID: <56159@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jul 90 17:50:21 GMT
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 14

Proposed:

1) That null references explicitly be defined as legal in the language.  A 
null reference is that which is created from a "dereferenced" null pointer
such as follows:

	FOO& fooref = *((FOO*)0);

2) That "dereferencing" null pointers except in the initialization of references
be explicitly defined as not legal in the language.  The exact effect
of dereferencing a null pointer would be "implementation defined", but the
intent is that no legal object can be referenced via a null pointer.

[disclaimer: this posting represents the opinions of an individual C++ user]