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From: uh@unido.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Dangling pointers in Turbo
Message-ID: <18500008@unido.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 20:36:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: unido.18500008
Posted: Fri Oct 18 20:36:00 1985
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Nf-From: unido!uh    Oct 18 23:36:00 1985



As much as I know, Mr Wirth in Zurich never said anything about waht
should happen, if pointers are not initialized. I know some more
compilers who run into difficulties if you use illegal pointer
references. (I think the UCSD compilers belong to this class too).
On the other hand a NIL initaliezed pointer should not perform any
curios things. In this case it is a compiler or run-time-system
error, I think. 

Trapping such illegal memory references should be the task of the
OS or the processor, either which one is better prepared for this task.
Only in cases the processor and the OS are not able to do this, the run-
time-system of the compiler should take over this task (especially on
8-bit systems).

I'm too working very much with Turbo 3.0, but only sometimes with pointers,
and also I always initialize all (!!!!) my variables, because only few
pascal compilers do that for me. Always remember: N. Wirth said nothing
about initalizing in his User Manual and Report.

     Uwe Hoch
     Computer Science Department, University of Dortmund
     4600 Dortmund 50, P.O. Box 500500, W.-Germany
     E-mail address UUCP: ...ihnp4!{hpfcla!hpbbn,mcvax}!unido!uh