Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: NULL again
Message-ID: <12311@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 5 Oct 88 15:03:01 GMT
References: <7782@bcsaic.UUCP> <25069@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <12246@steinmetz.ge.com> <7972@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> <12269@steinmetz.ge.com> <1988Oct4.122416.3575@ateng.ateng.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Followup-To: alt.flame
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 51


  I swear that the world is full of assholes who take something I wote
out of context to prove how smart they are. Here's another one!

In article <1988Oct4.122416.3575@ateng.ateng.com> chip@ateng.ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
| Gads, not another NULL argument.
| 
| According to davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr):
| >| The computer's internal representation of a null pointer may not
| >| be the same as the internal representation of the integer 0.
| >
| >  Just not true in the real world. There are hundreds of programs
| >written by "all the world's a VAX" types who use NULL as a pointer
| >(uncast) in procedure calls.
| 
| That's true but irrelevant.  THOSE PROGRAMS ARE NOT PORTABLE.  After all,
| bitwise representation is not the only issue.  Sometimes pointers are
| _larger_ than ints!

  Do you see a statement that says they are portable? Do you??!! If you
have read the entire discussion instead trying to impress us with you
briliance, you would see that the answer was to someone who said that
(a) NULL should always be 0, and (b) if it isn't the compiler is broken,
therefore (c) assuming NULL is 0 will be portable.

  I was pointing out that NULL is not portably 0 because (a) there are
lots of implementation which don't do it that way (real world) and (b)
dbANS says it will evaluate to a "pointer constant." I quoted section,
page, and line number showing this, making only the point that NULL
isn't zero.

  When I spend the time writing a carefully constructed reply, looking up
references, showing someone where their logic is wrong, and being polite
in the process, the least you can do is to read the whole posting before
trying to show off.

  I'm really impressed with your cute saying to put over my terminal,
here's one for you:

              Before you flame be sure you understand the
                                PROBLEM
                                and the
                                SOLUTION

  I've been trying very hard to be polite in my postings the last three
years, but I didn't try very hard in this one, and my personal mail
message to you represents not trying at all.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me