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-rw-r--r-- | man3const/NULL.3const | 74 |
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diff --git a/man3const/NULL.3const b/man3const/NULL.3const new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e043c1e --- /dev/null +++ b/man3const/NULL.3const @@ -0,0 +1,74 @@ +.\" Copyright (c) 2022 by Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> +.\" +.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Linux-man-pages-copyleft +.\" +.\" +.TH NULL 3const 2023-02-05 "Linux man-pages 6.05.01" +.SH NAME +NULL \- null pointer constant +.SH LIBRARY +Standard C library +.RI ( libc ) +.SH SYNOPSIS +.nf +.B #include <stddef.h> +.PP +.B "#define NULL ((void *) 0)" +.fi +.SH DESCRIPTION +.B NULL +represents a null pointer constant, +that is, a pointer that does not point to anything. +.SH CONFORMING TO +C99 and later; +POSIX.1-2001 and later. +.SH NOTES +The following headers also provide +.BR NULL : +.IR <locale.h> , +.IR <stdio.h> , +.IR <stdlib.h> , +.IR <string.h> , +.IR <time.h> , +.IR <unistd.h> , +and +.IR <wchar.h> . +.SH CAVEATS +It is undefined behavior to dereference a null pointer, +and that usually causes a segmentation fault in practice. +.PP +It is also undefined behavior to perform pointer arithmetic on it. +.PP +.I NULL \- NULL +is undefined behavior, according to ISO C, but is defined to be 0 in C++. +.PP +To avoid confusing human readers of the code, +do not compare pointer variables to +.BR 0 , +and do not assign +.B 0 +to them. +Instead, always use +.BR NULL . +.PP +.B NULL +shouldn't be confused with +.BR NUL , +which is an +.BR ascii (7) +character, +represented in C as +.BR \[aq]\e0\[aq] . +.SH BUGS +When it is necessary to set a pointer variable to a null pointer, +it is not enough to use +.BR memset (3) +to zero the pointer +(this is usually done when zeroing a struct that contains pointers), +since ISO C and POSIX don't guarantee that a bit pattern of all 0s +represent a null pointer. +See the EXAMPLES section in +.BR getaddrinfo (3) +for an example program that does this correctly. +.SH SEE ALSO +.BR void (3type) |