Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!rutgers!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: gcc and NULL function pointers.
Message-ID: <1146.Jun2221.20.2291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 22 Jun 91 21:20:22 GMT
References: <9752@cognos.UUCP> <25572@well.sf.ca.us>
Organization: IR
Lines: 23

In article <25572@well.sf.ca.us> Jef Poskanzer <jef@well.sf.ca.us> writes:
> Hey, I've got an idea: how about not using NULL?  Using a 0 explicitly
> cast to the appropriate pointer type works perfectly for all machines
> and compilers.  Furthermore, it makes the code more self-documenting
> and maintainable, and less error-prone.

Yeah. It's been a long time since I've used NULL in any program. When I
start maintaining someone else's code, the first thing I do is trash all
the NULLs. It's amazing how many bugs this catches. (Admittedly, they'd
be caught by ANSI prototypes too, but most C code isn't ANSI C.)

> Oh, wait.  It means typing a few more characters.  So much for that idea.

:-)

I'm not sure what people are arguing here. Yes, programmers should
always cast NULL appropriately if they use it at all, because there
exist vendors which #define NULL 0. Yes, vendors should define NULL as
((char *) 0) or ((void *) 0), because there exist programmers who use
NULL without casting and it's better to detect such misuse. What's the
issue?

---Dan