Re: question about nullptr

On 11.07.2024 01:25, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:

[...]
Compare it to 'enum' constants. When I code or debug I want to track
(search and find) them by name not by integer number.
Similar with the 'enum' bool type we introduced (when there was not
yet a bool type existing in C or C++) with literal constants 'true'
and 'false'. (Only two values, but still as important.)
Similar with the dedicated pointer value 0 (these days we used the
literal 'null'). (Only one value, still useful for tracking eq/ne
comparisons and initializations.)

 
Yes, you've said that before.  You want to search for nullptr.  I can't
think of how that might help find a real bug, if that's what you mean by
bug-tracking.
 
I was hoping for a story... "Once I had this bug where... and if I'd
been using nullptr I'd have found it a day earlier" kind of thing.  I'd
found a lot of bugs over the years, but I don't recall any that would
have been easier to find had I been able to search for nullptr.
 
I was looking for real-world insight here.  Obviously one could make up
a bug where p = nullptr; was written where, say, p = null - ptr; was
intended, but that's not what I mean.
 
Without such an example, your argument seems to be overly generic.

That's why I had problems to "explain" the reasons to you; because
it's so universal a property, so obvious (as I said), that I don't
know what else I could say. (Likewise with "real-word examples".)
What example could I give that explains that if you're looking for
specific dedicated semantical values it's easier to look them up
by [semantical] name than by a [ambiguous] number. Yes this speeds
up detection of errors when doing code inspections (for bugs or as
QA measure), and yes, this was helpful for program development and
bug detection in [my professional and private] practice.

Would you welcome the introduction of the keyword unity -- with the
value 1 and type int -- into C because one could then search for it?

No. (Please don't start to be ridiculous. - Or did you really miss
the point? - No offense intended.)

Janis