On Jan 2, 2008 8:08 PM, Robert Dailey wrote:

They are unrelated types.

But it is portable. The literal 0 has special meaning w.r.t to pointers. -- Felipe Magno de Almeida

I can't really agree or disagree, as my information comes from an article I read a long time ago. It stated that the portable way to assign NULL to a pointer is to first cast it to the type of the lvalue. At the very least I would expect (out of pessimism) SOME compiler in the world today to throw a warning when it sees this: class foo {}; foo* myfoo = 0; However, I haven't personally tried this. In all honesty I don't see any reason why the compiler would ever need to complain about this since I don't foresee any problems with assigning an integral constant of 0 to pointer types, or even using them during comparisons. However I guess if you guys say that it is portable, I suppose I should just save myself some executable size and avoid the use of nullptr. At this point the only real use I see in a nullptr class/struct is for readability. Where in the standard does it state that assigning an integral constant to a pointer type is legal? Perhaps there is some more generic rule in the standard to which this concept applies. On Jan 2, 2008 4:17 PM, Scott McMurray wrote:

On 02/01/2008, Robert Dailey wrote:

...

They are unrelated types.

But 0 is a compile-time integral constant with value 0, and is therefore implicitly convertible to any null pointer. Why do you think the comparison is any less portable than the initialization?

And the reinterpret_cast is actually less portable, since it assumes that the null pointer is represented by a null bit sequence. The correct way to cast 0 to a null pointer is through static_cast (or boost::implicit_cast). _______________________________________________ Boost-users mailing list Boost-users@lists.boost.org http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost-users

On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Scott McMurray wrote:

On 02/01/2008, Robert Dailey wrote:

...

Where in the standard does it state that assigning an integral constant to a pointer type is legal? Perhaps there is some more generic rule in the standard to which this concept applies.

4.10 Pointer conversions [conv.ptr] 1) A null pointer constant is an integral constant expression (5.19) rvalue of integer type that evaluates to zero. A null pointer constant can be converted to a pointer type; the result is the null pointer value of that type and is distinguishable from every other value of pointer to object or pointer to function type. Two null pointer values of the same type shall compare equal.

Those interested should check out http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2431.pdf "A name for the null pointer: nullptr (revision 4)". It's not in the draft standard yet, but will be soon. IIRC it also contains an excellent discussion of the issues involved. -- Dave Steffen - Software Engineer 4 Numerica Corporation (www.numerica.us http://www.numerica.us/ ) 4850 Hahns Peak Drive, Suite 200 Loveland, Colorado 80538 main (970) 461-2000 direct (970) 461-2422 x227 fax (970) 461-2004 Email: dave.steffen@numerica.us This message and any attachments are intended only for the individual or entity to which the message is addressed. This is a private message and may contain privileged information. If you are neither the intended recipient nor the agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, retransmission, dissemination, or taking of any action in reliance upon, the information in this communication is strictly prohibited, and may be unlawful. If you feel you have received this communication in error, please notify me immediately by returning this email to me and deleting it from your computer.

Well thanks guys for everything. I guess I don't need boost at all in this case after all. On Jan 2, 2008 8:25 PM, Miles Bader wrote:

...

I can't really agree or disagree, as my information comes from an

"Robert Dailey" writes: article I

...

read a long time ago. It stated that the portable way to assign NULL to a pointer is to first cast it to the type of the lvalue.

class foo {}; foo* myfoo = 0;

No, that's guaranteed to work. Either the article you read was wrong, or you misinterpreted it.

-Miles

-- "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." Mahatma Gandhi

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One difference is that I made the nullptr object static so it could be placed in a header without linker conflicts. Your idea is great and simple, I like it. Thanks a lot.

You are welcome. But it's not my idea. I had the same issue years ago and googled for it. I don't remember who posted it back then. I bet that guy is reading boost-users ;-) Thanks,

On Jan 2, 2008 5:40 PM, Victor A. Wagner Jr. wrote:

I personally like the (foo) and (!foo) notation and think "needing" a "NULL" is pointless given the other holes in the language

I agree. Though not "needed", I do think that the nullptr (or whatever is approved by the committee) syntax will improve readability in cases where you need to pass a null pointer value to a function (and you're too lazy to look up the signature). Using 0 in this case does make it slightly easier to confuse the arguments. However I will always use the "boolean style" tests as I find them more intuitive (not to mention more compact syntactically). Jon