Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 08:53:07 PDT From: Bill Fenner <fenner@parc.xerox.com> To: Andrew White <awhite@dca.net> Cc: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bug with gcc 2.6.2? Message-ID: <95Oct5.085313pdt.177475@crevenia.parc.xerox.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 04 Oct 95 23:42:47 PDT." <Pine.BSF.3.91.951005022938.4818Q-100000@dca.net>
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In message <Pine.BSF.3.91.951005022938.4818Q-100000@dca.net> you write:
>The following code generates a segmentation violation using gcc 2.6.2 as
>shipped with FreeBSD 2.0-RELEASE. It shouldn't!
Yes it should. NULL pointers are not valid "string" values.
Perhaps the FreeBSD str* man pages should adopt some text similar to
the SunOS man page:
WARNINGS
...
On the Sun processor, as well as on many other machines, you
can not use a NULL pointer to indicate a null string. A
NULL pointer is an error and results in an abort of the pro-
gram. If you wish to indicate a null string, you must have
a pointer that points to an explicit null string. On some
implementations of the C language on some machines, a NULL
pointer, if dereferenced, would yield a null string; this
highly non-portable trick was used in some programs. Pro-
grammers using a NULL pointer to represent an empty string
should be aware of this portability issue; even on machines
where dereferencing a NULL pointer does not cause an abort
of the program, it does not necessarily yield a null string.
Bill
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