Re: Usage of C++ NULL vs 0

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:52:00 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<58eba468-8702-43cd-a6f8-a892c062d889@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 25, 3:45 pm, Matthias Buelow <m...@incubus.de> wrote:

muktipada wrote:

As a C++ developer which one we should use for pointer assignment,
NULL or 0.


For assignment, I use 0 (in both C and C++) and usually !p for
testing for a null pointer. IMHO "NULL" is ugly and probably
just a workaround left over from the days when assigning 0 to
pointers could have caused type problems.


I think you've got it backwards. C++ is a typed language, and
you should say what you mean. In particular, a conditional
should have type bool, rather than count on some obscure
implicit conversions. The use of 0 for a null pointer is a
hang-over from C, where the authors forgot to provide a proper
null pointer constant (probably because the language was
evolving from B, which didn't have a bool type---or any types,
for that matter). The next release of the C++ standard will
correct this oversight.

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