Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 19:41:52 -0800 From: Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@xcllnt.net> To: standards@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: 64-bit NULL: a followup Message-ID: <20031129034152.GA20661@dhcp01.pn.xcllnt.net> In-Reply-To: <20031129031855.GA27684@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> References: <20031129005823.GA20090@dhcp01.pn.xcllnt.net> <20031129031855.GA27684@falcon.midgard.homeip.net>
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On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 04:18:56AM +0100, Erik Trulsson wrote: > > > > Notice the "st8". Since NULL is a pointer constant, programmers do > > (implicitly) expect it to have the same width as a pointer type and > > thus do not cast it to a pointer type or an integer type that has a > > width larger or equal to a pointer type. > > > Such an expectation is erroneous. Programmers who have such > expectations obviously do not know the C language well enough. Fine. So people suck. The problem is that code is written for operating systems that allows them to be ignorant and we'd like that code to run on FreeBSD as well. The programmers you claim of not having enough knowledge about the C language do not care what you think of them and in general do not care much about FreeBSD. Especially if we're going to knock on their doors telling them that they can't program and they need to fix their code because it doesn't work for us. So why not be realistic, come off it and help programmers out? > Of course, since (0L) is indeed a valid definition of NULL, there is no > technical reason why you couldn't make that change. Thanks, this actually is useful information. I do not want to create an invalid definition in support of broken code, but as long as we're within the margins I like to have something that is the most practical (and in my case minimizes the time I need to spend on fixing broken ports). -- Marcel Moolenaar USPA: A-39004 marcel@xcllnt.net
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