Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: A modest proposal Message-ID: <6125@brl-smoke.ARPA> Date: Thu, 16-Jul-87 14:33:23 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6125 Posted: Thu Jul 16 14:33:23 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 08:09:50 EDT References: <1362@cullvax.UUCP> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 15 In article <1362@cullvax.UUCP> drw@cullvax.UUCP (Dale Worley) writes: >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. Although I agree with the intent, if 0 were not still guaranteed to be equivalent to the null pointer, LOTS of existing applications (for example, almost all of UNIX) would break. Perhaps the best approach would be to introduce NULL as a keyword, "deprecate" 0 for null pointer (using other words, however), and hope that a future revision of the C standard could remove the deprecated feature. Unfortunately I suspect that you won't be able to persuade X3J11 that this is worth doing, but feel free to try.