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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: private types
Date: 20 Mar 2006 10:01:05 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2006-03-20T10:01:05-05:00
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"Dr. Adrian Wrigley" <amtw@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk> writes:

> On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:20:52 +0100, Martin Krischik wrote:
> 
> > Robert A Duff wrote:
> > 
> >> I believe the C++ rule is that 0 (written in your program) is the same
> >> thing as NULL -- but it need not be represented internally by
> >> all-zero-bits. �Casting the integer zero to a pointer, however, 
> >> does not necessarily result in NULL. �That's sort of confusing,
> >> but if you understand the rules, the "quite challenging" comment
> >> above does not hold.
> > 
> > Super! And how many (in %) of C++ programmer actually know that. By guess is
> > 0.1%. And indeed I is the main problem: Only a very few C/C++ programmers
> > actually master the language. 
> 
> It is (or was) quite a common interview question, to see if
> C (and C++) programmers know their subject properly.  As you
> say, Robert, most don't.

Martin said that.  I have no idea how close his .1% estimate is
to the truth.  It's certainly true that many programmers learn
their programming languages by experiment -- what works is
all-too-often assumed to be what the language is.

- Bob