Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Correction, a[33]
Message-ID: <13477@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 28 May 89 05:49:40 GMT
References: <5819@microsoft.UUCP> <17763@mimsy.UUCP> <13434@haddock.ima.isc.com> <2737@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 18

In article <2737@helios.ee.lbl.gov> envbvs@epb2 (Brian V. Smith) writes:
>In article <17763@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:

That's a misattribution; I wrote the text in question.

>>pointing to nothing dereferencable;
>What does "dereferencable" mean?

In C, unary "&" is the referencing operator; its inverse, unary "*", is the
dereferencing operator.  To "dereference" is to retrieve what a pointer points
to.  Certain pointer values, e.g. a null pointer or the overlast element of an
array, are not dereferencable.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
________
(The "overlast" element of an array a of size N is the ficticious element
a[N], which, if it existed, would follow the last element, a[N-1].  This is my
own terminology.)