Can your C compiler do this:


int main()
{
  int *p;
  p  = 0;
  *p = 0;
  return 0;
}

?

>>11
Back in the day, most platforms actually put zero at address zero, so that a null pointer was equivalent to the empty string. Apparently, converting all this code to use a real empty string on platforms with memory protection was a mess.

>>15
They weren't errors. That's kindof the point. Dereferencing a null pointer was well defined and supported on these platforms. Obviously using an exception handler to work around it in a modern OS is a horrible idea.