Re: fclose(0)

Richard Heathfield wrote:
lawrence.jones@xxxxxxxxxxx said:

Bartc <bc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If this was the case then it would be better to admit it rather than
suggest, as a few people have, that crashing on passing a null pointer
is actually a good idea.
It *is* a good idea:

No, it's merely a useful consequence.

it forces programmers to fix their defective code.

If that were true, it would be a pity that it isn't guaranteed by the
Standard. But it isn't true, of course. Some programmers never even see
the crashes, let alone fix their causes. For example, I have a web browser
written by someone else, which crashes whenever I accidentally click on a
PDF link and then click "cancel" on the subsequent dialog asking if I want
to hand over my firstborn to Adobe. Clearly the programmer never bothered
to test this execution path, so he has /not/ been forced to fix his
defective code.

But he or she would if a paying customer filed a bug report. That is,
unless he or she works for a well known supplier of non-compliant browsers.

--
Ian Collins.
.

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