Referencing NULL pointers

Steven M. Bellovin smb at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
Mon Jul 10 19:05:45 AEST 1989


In article <19367 at paris.ics.uci.edu>, hadley at ics.uci.edu (T.S. Hadley) writes:
>    By NULL pointer referencing I mean: consider the C frags:
>       ...
>       TYPE	*t = (TYPE *) 0;	/* typedef struct { ... } TYPE; */
>       if(t->field == 0)
>       ...

NULL pointer dereferencing (the correct term, btw) is illegal.  That
it works on some machines is coincidental.  I regard the segmentation
fault on the Suns as a useful feature of their implementation of
the system, as it catches bugs as shown above.



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