Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: use of NULL
Keywords: NULL zero 0 C function prototype
Message-ID: <9699@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 23 Feb 89 19:51:46 GMT
References: <1167@unisec.usi.com. <5312@turnkey.TCC.COM. <9582@smoke.BRL.MIL. <399@twwells.uucp: <973@optilink.UUCP> <9684@smoke.BRL.MIL> <20928@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 8

In article <20928@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> heather@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Heather Burris) writes:
>Why doesn't the C standard treat NULL or 0 (a static/constant NULL or 0,
>i.e. indicated at compile time) passed to a function that has a pointer
>value in the function prototype as a special case and do the cast implicitly?

It does (actually it's not a special case), but most existing C code
does not use prototypes, in which case the programmer has to explicitly
cast the NULL argument to the proper type.