---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nish Aravamudan <nish.aravamudan@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 22:36:42 -0800 Subject: Re: How is NULL pointer dereference handled inside kernel? To: Kishore A K <kishoreak@xxxxxxxxx> Kishore, On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:49:50 +0530, Kishore A K <kishoreak@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I remember a big discussion happening on LKML on this > topic (i.e., NULL vs 0) a couple of months back. It must > be still available in their mail archives. Try googling for > "Use NULL instead of integer 0" & you must find it. Must > say it was a pretty heated discussion. Dont know what > the outcome was. I stopped following it after sometime.for the pointer. Thanks for the pointer. I found the thread at, for others' reference: http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/7/7/181 . Very interesting. Conclusion?: Linus' final word is that NULL is a pointer and 0 is an integer (even though K&R disagrees). Thus, the "official" Linux coding style (especially for new code, but also applies to how old code *should* be) would be to use NULL when assigning pointers and not 0. If nothing else, this makes things type-clear (e.g., parameters); if that's not good enough for you, it makes things clear period :) -Nish -- "Dream as if you'll live forever; Live as if you'll die today." -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
