What machines core dump on deref of NULL?

Chip Salzenberg chip at tct.uucp
Wed Jul 4 05:01:07 AEST 1990


According to jc at minya.UUCP (John Chambers):
>In article <26878337.172 at tct.uucp>, chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>> We should NOT make engineering decisions based on
>> perceived blame.  Dereferencing null pointers is
>> *illegal* and *non-portable*.
>
>Beg to differ, but C is widely used for writing embedded code [...]

You are taking my statement out of context.

I was talking about an *application* that failed because it was moved
from an architecture that permitted user programs to dereference NULL
to an architecture that did not permit it.

In that context, if "the computer" or "the compiler" gets the blame
for the failure, it's a bum rap, because the original programmer is at
fault for writing non-portable code.

In the context of device drivers, though, "non-portable" is often the
order of the day, and the above comments do not apply.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at ComDev/TCT     <chip at tct.uucp>, <uunet!ateng!tct!chip>



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