points by panzi 2 days ago | 0 comments
Personally I think there was nothing wrong with returning NULL. "But if people don't check for it it crashes their programs!" Good! Let it crash loudly! Then they notice and fix the issue.
Also I think it could have returned ":". Given the file format of /etc/shadow and /etc/passwd I don't think it's possible to have a : as a value for anything.
[–] hnfong 2 days ago
[–] panzi 2 days ago
Indeed. Let's keep NULL.
I wonder if somebody else would have thought the exact same thing in a different (non-/etc/*) context, and then you get the same effect in a more obscure manner.