> On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 12:14:59AM -0700, Padraig > O'Briain wrote: > > > I have submitted patches to various projects to > change references to string variables which could be > NULL from > > > > s to > > > > s ? s : "NULL" > > Why? Other than debugging, what possible value does > "NULL" have to > users besides than alerting them to the fact that > your software is > buggy?
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 12:14:59AM -0700, Padraig > O'Briain wrote: > > > I have submitted patches to various projects to > change references to string variables which could be > NULL from > > > > s to > > > > s ? s : "NULL" > > Why? Other than debugging, what possible value does > "NULL" have to > users besides than alerting them to the fact that > your software is > buggy? To play "Devil's Advocate" here, one could argue that printing "(null)" in certain scenarios is desireable. For example, in survey software, knowing the difference between a question that was left blank intentionally and a question that was not answered at all is important. Even databases often make the distinction between a field never having been set, having been set to a zero-length string. However, in that case, I would expect the software to send "(null)" to printf, NOT a real NULL value -- it's just broken to me to expect a system API to accept bad data. -Shawn This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-code mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/opensolaris-code
