Keeping binary compatibility

[Lubos Lunak]

On Tuesday 05 of October 2010, Michael Pyne wrote:
> On Monday, October 04, 2010 17:55:30 Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > On Monday 04 of October 2010, George Kiagiadakis wrote:
> > > I think source compatibility is easier to maintain because it is more
> > > obvious when you break it and people generally understand it better
> > > than binary compatibility. I don't think we have a problem keeping
> > > source compatibility atm, do we?
> >
> >  We occassionally do (I e.g. remember fixing a bug somewhen in the past
> > that had been introduced by broken source compatibility and people
> > thinking 0 is a null pointer).
>
> Are you referring to 0 in C, or in C++? I ask only because 0 really *is*
> the C++ null pointer (or at least, the only way of convincing the C++
> compiler to use whatever the actual null pointer is), at least until
> C++0x's nullptr addition gets better supported.
>
> The catch is that conversion from 0 to "real null pointer" only happens for
> pointer types, so if int is also possible, C++ is perfectly happy to not
> perform the conversion.

 Thanks for saving me the work of refuting your first paragraph by doing so in 
your second paragraph :). And note that at least with gcc NULL already is 
nullptr in practice.

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l.lunak at suse.cz