From: utzoo!decvax!cca!lwa%MIT-CSR@MIT-Multics@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: Re: (char *)1 Article-I.D.: sri-unix.3270 Posted: Tue Sep 14 15:18:49 1982 Received: Thu Sep 16 01:07:40 1982 Date: 10 Sep 1982 1913-EDT (Friday) Actually, (char *)1 or something similar is useful in certain very restricted circumstances: namely, accessing device control registers, or other hardware locations, on machines like pdp-11's in which I/O devices live in the same address space as memory. I have written several standalone programs (eg. for hardware diagnostics) in C; all of them use this kind of cast. Also, if you'll look at UNIX device drivers in the more recent systems (Version 7 and up) you'll find that they do the same thing. -Larry Allen -------