Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!mtunx!pacbell!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: #defining NULL as (-1) in stdio
Message-ID: <8139@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 23 Jun 88 15:56:06 GMT
References: <8806221521.AA00536@decwrl.dec.com> <4036@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <4036@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> moore@ic.berkeley.edu (Peter X Moore) writes:
>[NULL] is simply a magic cookie defined in stdio.h and returned by some
>of the stdio functions to signal an error.

WRONG.  "NULL" has always been intended to represent a null pointer --
where do you think it got its name?  Functions that return pointers can
return either a valid pointer or a null pointer, so that NULL in fact is
often useful as the return value to indicate an unsuccessful operation.
But the more general meaning is simply "null pointer".