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From: ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: NULL pointer
Message-ID: <535@brl-sem.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 17-Nov-85 16:29:30 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-sem.535
Posted: Sun Nov 17 16:29:30 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Nov-85 03:26:33 EST
References: <2098@brl-tgr.ARPA> <916@celtics.UUCP> <2910@sun.uucp> <52@hadron.UUCP> <2982@sun.uucp> <325@steinmetz.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 17

> 
> Many of these problems would not exist today if the original definition of
> NULL had been:
> 
> 	#define NULL	((char *) 0)
> 
Personally, I never use NULL.  NULL is a misnomer.  Zero is defined
to be the invalid pointer, zero should be used.

But we've been through this before.  Assigning a type to NULL opens
up as many problems as it solves.  There are a class of machines where
byte pointers themselves are different than pointers to any other type.

If you are going to assing a type to NULL you probably ought to use
(void *).

=Ron