"= 0" instead of "= nullptr"?

[jrlanglois]

Hi Jules,

I spotted something out of the ordinary in the FileChooser header file: you are defaulting pointer-based parameters to 0, instead of nullptr! :shock:

[railjonrogut]

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Stephan-T-Lavavej-Everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-nullptr/

As you can see by the interview… The compiler will honor both. (As I update my older code though I have been using nullptr)

Rail

[jrlanglois]

Indeed, I’ve aware of that Just pointing it’s out of the ordinary for the library. (See the coding standard)

[railjonrogut]

Aah… I over-reacted to the :shock:

Cheers,

Rail

[jules]

Ah, thanks for spotting that!

[jrlanglois]

Hey Jules,

Somewhat related to the post’s title, I noticed that there’s some documentation that says “@returns [something], or 0 […]” for methods that return a pointer… For clarity, would it be better to say “@returns [something], or null […]” (or nullptr… there seems to be a mixture of both null and nullptr in documentation of other functions/methods/classes)?

Examples:

File::createInputStream();

/** Creates a stream to read from this file.

    @returns    a stream that will read from this file (initially positioned at the
                start of the file), [i][b]or 0[/b][/i] if the file can't be opened for some reason
    @see createOutputStream, loadFileAsData

*/

File::createOutputStream();

/** Creates a stream to write to this file.

    If the file exists, the stream that is returned will be positioned ready for
    writing at the end of the file, so you might want to use deleteFile() first
    to write to an empty file.

    @returns    a stream that will write to this file (initially positioned at the
                end of the file), [i][b]or 0[/b][/i] if the file can't be opened for some reason
    @see createInputStream, appendData, appendText
*/

There are a bunch more… find-replace “or 0” with ‘whatever’ would probably do it.

[jules]

Ah, you’re clearly as pedantic as I am! Thanks!

[jrlanglois]

Ah, you’re clearly as pedantic as I am! Thanks!

The more I code, the more I think I’m suffering from some code-only form of O.C.D.!

[jules]

@jrlanglois

The more I code, the more I think I’m suffering from some code-only form of O.C.D.!

Yep. And it only gets worse, in my experience!

[Leirbag]

BTW, have Jules ever been interviewed? Is there any testimony of it on internet?

[jrlanglois]

BTW, have Jules ever been interviewed? Is there any testimony of it on internet?

Check out this reddit article

Was hoping to find a tedTalk of Jules, or something on programming or C++; I guess I was hoping for too much