Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!necntc!cullvax!drw From: drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: A modest proposal Message-ID: <1362@cullvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 13-Jul-87 15:04:09 EDT Article-I.D.: cullvax.1362 Posted: Mon Jul 13 15:04:09 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jul-87 06:50:14 EDT Organization: Cullinet Software, Westwood, MA, USA Lines: 14 Of all the features of C that are gross, the grossest one is NULL. As just a sample of its ugliness, consider the rule that "a pointer can be compared against a zero integral constant". This is the only place in C in a comparison where (a) a constant can't be replaced by an expression of the same value, or (b) a constant can't be replaced by a constant with a different value but the same type. What I propose is the NULL be made into a keyword of the language which acts like a constant and whose value is a pointer, and eliminating "0" as the null pointer. As far as I know, no decently written C program will break on this, and it would clean a lot of cruft out of the language definition. Dale