Re: NULL

[croco@openwall.com]

Hi folks,

On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 12:02:29PM +0100, John Spencer wrote:

> so for me, there are 3 options how to deal with issue in the future:

> 2) change musl so it is compatible with those apps. this would mean:
> #if defined(__GNUC__) && defined(__cplusplus__)
> #define NULL __null
> #elif defined (__cplusplus__)
> #define NULL 0
> #else
> #define NULL (void *) 0 /* for C code */
> #end

> this change is the easiest solution: any problem will be magically fixed.

Actually, the problem is not fixed this way; this just gives the problem
the right (hmmm.. license, heh) to exist forever.  My experience of
teaching students shows that when smart people introduce something to help
stupid people to remain useful without learning, we end up with more people
who don't want to learn, and that's all (arhgggg, I hate the
one-unknown-to-me who decided one day that two object modules having global
variables of the same name and type should link successfully... so that
newbie can simply place 'int my_damn_var;' line into his/her header not
bothering with understanding of 'extern' and the linker as such, and then
they tend to ask the well-known thing 'why do you say this is incorrect if
it works')

However, sometimes the practice forces us to do wrong things just because
we have no time or resources to do what is the right, and it looks like
this is exactly the case.  So perhaps the "option 2" will finally be
choosen, despite we don't like it.  However, I'd suggest at least to let
the people know this is a WORKAROUND for the bugs THEY introduce: make this
hack disabled by default, enabled by a compile-time option, and issue a
warning which points them to this discussion or something similar.
Something like "Okay, if your program doesn't work without this workaround,
then you can use the workaround, but you'd better fix your program".  This
will not do much influence while musl is not so popular, but I hope it will
become popular one day (I really do... let's give the damn world a chance),
and then the people will have something to think about.


Thanks!

Andrey Stolyarov