DeVault: Announcing the Hare programming language

I have to ask, what were you trying to add to the discussion ?

Sure, you are absolutely correct but what relevance does it have ? If the *compiler* has to assume that NULL points to a valid object what programs would break ? What other fallout would there be ? The only thing I can think of is that when of lawyering about "if (my_pointer == NULL)" you would have to say "Does my_pointer point to the object at address NULL?" instead of "Is my_pointer pointing to an invalid object?".

I think most interpretations of the standard, in the context of undefined behaviour, are simply done in bad faith. My opinion is that the reason that language is in there, and has to be there, is so that malloc(), or anything else that works with a pointer, can return or check for an error. And the reason dereferencing a NULL pointer is undefined is because there is no telling how a platform behaves when you do so. See how none of this has anything to do with the compiler ?

It would do so much good for these discussions if the standard and what it says were put aside. Talk about how one or another change would affect real existing programs and/or platforms. Talk about possible fallout. Talk about potential issues. Talk about benefits. Because "oh, how terrible, now some standard does not match up if I squint at this way" is completely meaningless and adds nothing. Standards, in general, should be looked upon as a nothing more than a aid to achieving interoperability (they can and do contain falsehoods). We all know that standards are violated all the time and to make things work one needs domain specific experience. Lastly, if you are writing a standard your goal should be to document the status quo and most definitely not an attempt to change the world.