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Path: ...!news.nobody.at!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: question about nullptr Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2024 20:52:21 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 27 Message-ID: <865xs6gzyi.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <v6bavg$3pu5i$1@dont-email.me> <20240706054641.175@kylheku.com> <v6bfi1$3qn4u$1@dont-email.me> <l9ciO.7$cr5e.2@fx05.iad> <877cdyuq0f.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <2ckiO.19403$7Ej.4487@fx46.iad> <87plrpt4du.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <9bCiO.7108$sXW9.3805@fx41.iad> <877cdwu9s1.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> <v6if96$18hur$1@dont-email.me> <87y16bw1hf.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> <86r0c18gbl.fsf@linuxsc.com> <87h6cxuexa.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 05:52:22 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="f42e4005105099d89c60a754521770ce"; logging-data="3282385"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19y7aKDTgt5vu+e3P5KqrqErCz34cRvMrc=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:XmPxwwiEP7/uEW8jj/rEdDsn/SI= sha1:GOaOALqFAKGsY2ibJgvwdpfpOs0= Bytes: 2555 Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes: > Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> writes: > >> Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes: >> >>> Hmm. I like the idea of a type-agnostic way to express a "zero" >>> value, [but] C's use of 0 for all scalar types strikes me more as >>> an historical accident than a design feature. >> >> I don't think it was an accident at all. It was chosen to be >> consistent with how if(), while(), !, ?:, and so forth, all act. >> There is a very consistent design philosophy there. Sometimes >> people who come from a strong Pascal background don't like it, >> but personally I find the C model easier and more convenient to >> work with than the Pascal model. > > In early C, int was in a very real sense the default type. In B, > types weren't even explicit, and IIRC variables were effectively "of > type int", or more precisely a 16-bit PDP-11 word. (I'm glossing > over some details of B, many of which I don't know). In that > context 0 made sense as a general-purpose "zero" value. My comment is not about the type but about the value. That the constant 0 happens to be of type int is irrelevant to my conclusions.