On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:30:24 -0400 James Carlson wrote:
> Garrett D'Amore writes:
> > My leaning is to #1.  It seems like we're trying to make bad 
> > applications happy, to satisfy what is probably a small minority of 
> > developers who feel that such use of NULL should be legal (despite 
> > documentation to the contrary) -- and who are unwilling to use a 
> > perfectly reasonable workaround, at a potential cost to the greater set 
> > of well-behaved applications.

> I think what's missing there is that this is (unfortunately) not just
> a minority of developers.  The bulk of user-space software looks like
> this these days.  People are just plain careless, ...

this is a bit harsh
people tend to code to what their local system tolerates
even the most meticulous coders can fall prey to this
by assuming their favorite standard implementation actually implements the 
standard

e.g., glibc implements posix
well, yes, it might, but it also makes choices on some implementation defined 
behavior
that could be mistaken for standard behavior, sometimes even after
meticulous reading of the standard

-- Glenn Fowler -- AT&T Research, Florham Park NJ --


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