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From: dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: News for Xenix on PC AT ?
Message-ID: <442@prairie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Apr-87 22:59:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: prairie.442
Posted: Fri Apr 24 22:59:25 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Apr-87 23:33:23 EDT
References: <18346@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <145@sds.UUCP> <17005@sun.uucp> <146@sds.UUCP> <2440@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Reply-To: dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank)
Organization: Prairie Computing, Madison, Wisconsin
Lines: 18
Xref: mnetor news.software.b:549 comp.lang.c:1903

In article <2440@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> jss@hector (Jerry Schwarz) writes:
>K&R: A pointer may be compared to an integer, but the result is
>machine dependent unless the integer is the constant 0.  A pointer to
>which 0 has been assigned is guaranteed not to point to any object
>and will appear to be equal to 0 ...

   Oh.  The VAX compiler and linker appear to arrange that (char *)0
ALWAYS points to a null string.  Other systems do the same (I believe
HP/UX does, given the unportability of code in a popular user-friendly
mail agent published on the this network).  If the VAX would have the
decency to fault on null pointer dereferencing, a lot of code written
on it would be a heck of a lot more portable.

-- 
      Dan Frank (w9nk)
	ARPA: dan@db.wisc.edu			ATT: (608) 255-0002 (home)
	UUCP: ... uwvax!prairie!dan		     (608) 262-4196 (office)
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