[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
More information about the TUHS
mailing list