Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!exspes
From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: pointer sizes, was: Re: What does char **ch mean?
Message-ID: <1991May20.135241.7878@gdr.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 20 May 91 13:52:41 GMT
References: <5805@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath
Lines: 15

In article <5805@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>
>There is no reason why placing NULL at address 0 should throw away
>anything more than one byte of the address space.  

Well, almost.  Though I can see how putting a hole right in the middle
of the address space could be painfully inconvenient.  Also, on
segmented architectures (e.g. Multics) putting NULL at address {0,0}
(more precisely 0|0, and it STILL didn't have a bit pattern which
looked anything like 0) would mean throwing away an entire segment, not
just the one byte.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!ukc!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132