Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: An interesting behaviour in printf
Message-ID: <9874@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 19 Mar 89 06:00:40 GMT
References: <960@Portia.Stanford.EDU> <15938@cup.portal.com> <2343@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <2343@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <15938@cup.portal.com> Tim_CDC_Roberts@cup.portal.com writes:
>>Trivia question: is the '(null)' output of printf standard or widespread?

AT&T UNIX System V Release 2.0 just printed out whatever was accidentally
pointed at.  In my version (BRL UNIX System V emulation for 4BSD), I
decided that the test for a null pointer was cheap insurance and I also
have *printf("%s",(char*)0) print "(null)" rather than behave randomly.
Such matters concern what X3J11 dubbed "quality of implementation" issues.