[LC++]Null or 0

[Torsten Rennett]

On Sonntag, 22. Februar 2004 16:12, Peter Poulsen wrote:
> I have read that we should use 0 over NULL when setting a pointer to
> "nothing".
>
> Does anybody know why? 

In C NULL is often defined as '(void *)0' and this is incorrect in C++ 
because there the type of NULL must be an integer type. Otherwise, you 
could not assign NULL to a pointer. This is because in C++ there is no 
automatic conversion from 'void *' to any other type.

So several people and style guides recommend not using NULL in C++. But 
nowadays most of the heaeder files are prepared for using C++ and they 
define NULL correctly (as 0, or with gcc as __null). Using NULL with gcc 
is perfectly OK.

> To me it seems better to use NULL as it indicates
> in the code that this is a pointer being set to nothing, and not an
> interger being assigned the value 0.

ACK! And thats the reason why I still use NULL and also recommend in doing 
so.

> I am aware that in most compilers NULL is just a macro for 0.

... if you are using C++ (i.e. '__cplusplus' is defined). For C it will 
most certainly still be '(void *)0'. Have a look at stddef.h.

Torsten

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