Talk:Cyclone (programming language)

Never-NULL pointers and arithmatic

From the article:

The simple change of * to @ saves the programmer from having to write NULL checks and the operating system from having to trap NULL pointer dereferences. This extra restriction, however, can be a rather large stumbling block for most C programmers, who are used to being able to manipulate their pointers directly with arithmetic. Although this is desirable, it can lead to buffer overflows and other off-by-one-style attacks.

I don't understand the second sentence. If the "extra restriction" it refers to is the fact that never-NULL pointers can't be NULL, what does this have to do with pointer arithmatic? Neilc 01:45, 21 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]