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From: roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger Klorese)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: if (p) ...
Message-ID: <916@celtics.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Oct-85 18:08:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: celtics.916
Posted: Wed Oct 16 18:08:40 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Oct-85 04:30:25 EDT
References: <2098@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger Klorese)
Organization: Celerity Computing (Eastern Region), Framingham, MA
Lines: 31
Summary: 

In article <2098@brl-tgr.ARPA> harged%ti-eg.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (Richard_Hargrove) writes:
>
>means, whether it is good style, &c... is overlooking something.
>Nowhere in K & R is the meaning of the distinguished constant
>NULL defined. I thought its definition was implementation
>dependent. It just so happens that all implementations I know of
>use 0 (or 0L). But nothing *requires* this.

In fact, I've worked in an environment (PRIMOS and other Multics-style systems)
with segmented addressing schemes (and demand-paged virtual memory) wherein 
the definition of a NULL pointer was any address in the designated-highest-
possible segment (defined as octal 7777).  Thus, for C to see a pointer as 
null required conversion from 7777/0 to 0 (or seg 0 loc 0, which is a valid
address) and back again!  

In summary:

YEAH, a portable test is necessary that does not depend on NULL being ZERO.

-- 
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| ... "What were you expecting, rock'n'roll?"                                  |
|Roger B.A. Klorese                                                            |
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