Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 8 Jul 2004 09:21:24 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] Use NULL instead of integer 0 in security/selinux/ |
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On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Timothy Miller wrote: > > Not to be picky, and I realize that we're not using C++ here, and it may > not apply, but every C++ text I've read deprecates NULL and says to use > 0. That is, THE WAY that you specify a null pointer in C++ is with a > zero. It's no surprise that C programmers might pick up that habit.
It's a bad habit, and it's one (of many) bad things C++ does. The sad part is that C++ does it for all the wrong reasons - there's no reason to not realize that ((void *)0) is an even better special case, and indeed last I heard at least gcc does allow that in C++ too.
The fact is, when somebody else picks up a mistake, that doesn't make it any less of a mistake. And it's not like C++ is the paragon of good taste anyway.
I've seen too damn many people mistake NULL and NUL (admit it, you've seen it too), and I've seen code like
char c = NULL;
and any system where that goes through without a warning is totally broken. And yes, that includes a _lot_ of C++ braindamages.
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