Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.9 3/12/85; site unisoft.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!lll-crg!lll-lcc!unisoft!fnf
From: fnf@unisoft.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: NULL pointer
Message-ID: <596@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Nov-85 15:30:18 EST
Article-I.D.: unisoft.596
Posted: Fri Nov 22 15:30:18 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Nov-85 06:50:19 EST
References: <3423@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: fnf@unisoft.UUCP (Fred Fish)
Organization: UniSoft Systems, Berkeley
Lines: 12

In article <3423@brl-tgr.ARPA> bilbo.niket@locus.ucla.edu (Niket K. Patwardhan) writes:
>BTW, I have had this misconception ever since I heard of casts and apparently
>a number of people have also at least started out with such a notion.

Did you by chance get your first exposure to C on a PDP-11 using the DECUS
C compiler?  I did, and it repeatedly stated throughout the documentation 
that "casts were not conversions", and that casting something to another
type was the same as treating the old object's *bit-pattern* as if
it was the new type with the same *bit-pattern*.  I don't know if it still
claims this, as this was several years ago.

-Fred