#defining NULL as (-1) in stdio

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <4036 at pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> moore at ic.berkeley.edu (Peter X Moore) writes:
>[NULL] is simply a magic cookie defined in stdio.h and returned by some
>of the stdio functions to signal an error.

WRONG.  "NULL" has always been intended to represent a null pointer --
where do you think it got its name?  Functions that return pointers can
return either a valid pointer or a null pointer, so that NULL in fact is
often useful as the return value to indicate an unsuccessful operation.
But the more general meaning is simply "null pointer".