From -3823035688850420090 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f78e5,53d56717e82ab663 X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public From: drew@revolt.poohsticks.org (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: cout << null pointers Date: 2000/07/09 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 643939042 Approved: Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++ References: <39656D42.E049FCAA@ix.netcom.com> X-Authentication-Warning: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU: fjh set sender to devnull@stump.algebra.com using -f X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Mail2News-Path: news.demon.net!mulga.cs.mu.oz.au X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 963065850 mail2news:1953 mail2news mail2news.demon.co.uk Organization: Poohsticks Taoists; Boulder, CO, USA X-Robomod: STUMP, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2000 18:29:15 CDT Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ In article <39656D42.E049FCAA@ix.netcom.com>, Paul Meyerholtz wrote: >char * p = 0; >cout << p << "\n\n"; >However, the handling of "cout << p" seems to cause problems for most >computers, with results from segment faults to garbage output. Dereferencing a NULL pointer is undefined, which means the code could handle it gracefully, kill the program, crash the computer, reformat the hard disk, or make daemons fly out your nose..... >Is there anything in the standard about this? Should cout check for the >null pointer? It would be nice if ostream &operator<<(const char*) did something sensible (like print "null"), but isn't required. -- -- Home Page For those who do, no explanation is necessary. For those who don't, no explanation is possible. --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. To submit articles, try just posting with ] [ your news-reader. If that fails, use mailto:std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu ] [ --- Please see the FAQ before posting. --- ] [ FAQ: http://reality.sgi.com/austern_mti/std-c++/faq.html ]