Disallow null references in safe code?
Meta
jared771 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 2 09:41:58 PST 2014
On Sunday, 2 February 2014 at 12:42:47 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
> On Sunday, February 02, 2014 12:52:44 Timon Gehr wrote:
>> On 02/02/2014 04:39 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> > I'm not sure how I feel about that, particularly since I
>> > haven't seen such
>> > data myself. My natural reaction when people complain about
>> > null pointer
>> > problems is that they're sloppy programmers (which isn't
>> > necessarily fair,
>> > but that's my natural reaction).
>>
>> There is no such thing as 'naturality' that is magically able
>> to justify
>> personal attacks in a technical discussion, even if qualified.
>
> Would you prefer that I had said "initial reaction" or "gut
> reaction?" I'm
> just saying that that's how I tend to feel when I see
> complaints about null
> pointers. I have never accused anyone of anything or otherwise
> attacked them
> because they complained about null pointers. That _would_ be
> rude.
>
>> The situation does not have to be unbearable in order to
>> improve it!
>
> True, but I don't even agree that null pointers are that big a
> deal in the
> first place. If we really want to add non-nullable pointers or
> references to
> the language, then we can. I don't think that that's
> necessarily a bad idea.
> But I doubt that I'll use them often, and I do think that the
> whole issue is
> frequently blown out of proportion.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis
Ideally you'd be using them wherever you use objects and
pointers, as they'd be the default.
More information about the Digitalmars-d
mailing list