[TUHS] origins of void* -- Apology!

Bakul Shah bakul at bitblocks.com
Thu Nov 9 07:25:35 AEST 2017


On Wed, 08 Nov 2017 17:44:50 +0000 Ralph Corderoy <ralph at inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
Ralph Corderoy writes:
> Hi Bakul,
> 
> > void* serves a different purpose. It says this is an untyped pointer
> > (or a ptr to an instance of any type) so no question of size being an
> > issue.
> 
> In C, ignoring POSIX, a void pointer is big enough to hold any pointer
> to data.  Pointers to data may be different sizes.  And a void pointer
> can't hold a function pointer, but all function pointers are defined to
> be the same size.  Thus `void (*)(void)' can be used as a generic
> function pointer type and cast to other ones when needed.

Yes, I was being sloppy, not mentiong the fn ptr exception.

I was saying `void *' represents a generic non-function
pointer. I was just separating it from what Ron wants, which
is, if I understand right, is a pointer to the *smallest*
addressable memory unit. I agree that `char' shouldn't do
double duty as the smallest addressable unit and I was
suggesing uint8_t does that job. But that is not true either.
There are word addressable machines where you can't directly
address bytes (if they have 8 bit bytes). Nor would you want a
"byte pointer" to be a general pointer.

> > It shouldn't even have been "void*". I would've preferred _* and _
> > instead of void* and void. Much more appropriate for a concise
> > language like C!
> 
> That's awful.  Might as well say `return' occurs so often, it should
> have been `@'.  :-)

Fits right in with "e1 ? e2 : e3" :-) My thinking was that the
word void loses any meaning in "void *". It is a not a pointer
to an empty space.  Seems people just didn't want to add a new
keyword so they reused void. _ is alreast more mnemonic.



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