[TUHS] origins of void*

Doug McIlroy doug at cs.dartmouth.edu
Mon Nov 6 10:37:16 AEST 2017


As has been explained, void came from Algol 68 via Steve Bourne.
As no object could be declared void, void* was a useless
construct. A kind of variable that could point to any object
was required to state the type of useful functions like qsort.
To avoid proliferation of keywords, the useless void* was
pressed into service. I do not remember who suggested that.

Doug



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