5 ms·

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rust[1] yet. It's a systems programming language that has managed to get rid of null pointers by carefully controlling the w

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rust[1] yet. It's a systems programming language that has managed to get rid of null pointers by carefully controlling the ways in which a a value can be constructed[2]. [1] http://www.rust-lang.org/ http://www.rust-lang.org/ [2] https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Doc-language-FAQ#how-do-you-get-away-with-no-null-pointers https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Doc-language-FAQ#how-do...

Dewie 13y ago
And IIRC the compiler translates usages of None to null, so any complaint about inefficiency probably does not apply in this case, either.
- dietrichepp 13y ago
  This is actually quite common in languages which support ADTs—you stick tags in the pointer to discriminate between subtypes of a union.
Jare 13y ago
I don't think Rust is such a shining example of a solid language in this area, at least not yet. For example: http://stackoverflow.com/a/20704252/626867 http://stackoverflow.com/a/20704252/626867
- azth 13y ago
  The SO issue you linked to has nothing to do with null pointers.
- pcwalton 13y ago
  That has nothing to do with null pointers, and that was agreed to be changed today.