Re: question about nullptr

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

On 08.07.2024 09:19, Kaz Kylheku wrote:

On 2024-07-07, Ben Bacarisse <ben@bsb.me.uk> wrote:

I find myself completely out of step with many posters here about
"explicit code" should look like.  I think
>
  char *p = 0;
>
is explicit enough and, in fact, I consider it a plus point if someone
reading it goes "hey, what's going on here?" and ends up learning that 0
is null pointer constant in C.

 
And if that person is on the C or C++ langauge committee, that bit of
learning could just prevent a superfluous non-invention like nullptr.

>
What's superfluous to one is useful for others (e.g. for grep'ing
occurrences of a null-pointer value in source codes);

This is been suggested twice now but I'm struggling to see why that is
useful.  I can see management wanting one to find all uses of a null
pointer constant to check that they have all been replaced by the
"safer" nullptr, but what's the value in searching for nullptr?

if it's not
defined in a standard it gets explicitly defined individually, and
then likely in different (non-uniform, non-standard) ways.
>
To me it's more likely that because of that it had been deliberately
added to support such desires,

That would be a sound suggestion if "such desires" could be explained.
Until then, I suggest it is simply harmonisation with C++.  C now has
true and false, [[...]] attributes, typeof, __has_include and no doubt
quite a few more I've forgotten.  nullptr is, until some other argument
can be made, just another one of those.

and less likely that the C-standards
folks need to learn "C" and wouldn't know what 0 as a pointer value
would mean or that it has a clear semantic in such pointer contexts.

--
Ben.