Xref: utzoo comp.std.c:983 comp.lang.c:17345
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!alberta!antoine
From: antoine@alberta.UUCP (Antoine Verheijen)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: realloc
Summary: NULL is not the same as uninitialized.
Message-ID: <2185@pembina.UUCP>
Date: 31 Mar 89 23:33:59 GMT
Reply-To: antoine@pembina.UUCP (Antoine Verheijen)
Organization: U. of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Lines: 14

In article <9122@alice.UUCP> andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) writes:
>
>
>gregg townsend reminds us of the pANS ``feature'' that malloc(0) returns NULL.
>can anyone provide the (or any) justification of this pointless stupid
>definition? i just love the idea that an initialised pointer is SOMETIMES
>indistinguishable from an uninitialised pointer.


Please note that a NULL pointer is not (necessarily) the same thing as an
uninitialized pointer. NULL is a very specific and legitimate value for
a pointer whereas an uninitialized pointer is, by definition, unpredictable,
its value usually being dependent on the system you're running under (unless
I've missed something new in the standard).