Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!cca!g-rh
From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Header problems
Message-ID: <25398@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 8 Mar 88 23:40:10 GMT
References: <2550049@hpisod2.HP.COM> <7412@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3351@chinet.UUCP>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 22

In article <3351@chinet.UUCP> dag@chinet.UUCP (Daniel A. Glasser) writes:
>In article <7412@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>
>Your use of NULL === 0 promotes unportable code, and is considered to be
>bad programming style in a world where portability across multiple machine
>architectures (ie, PDP-11, VAX-11, M680x0, I80x86 and Z800x) is required
>for commercial reasons.
>
	This comes up regularly.  There is nothing wrong defining NULL as
0; it does not make for non-portability.  The fault lies in passing NULL
as an uncasted pointer across a calling sequence.  Since lint will tell
you about this, there is no good reason for this happening.  In actual
fact, I am wary of using (void *)0 for portability reasons -- I don't
know (and don't care) if all implementations that I have to deal with
handle it correctly.  I do know that all implementations handle
(proper_type *)0 correctly.  [Actually I don't know that, but I've never
seen it fail.]
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.