On Mon, 2013-10-07 at 16:17 +0200, Marc Glisse wrote: > Hello, > > this patch adds an attribute to let the compiler know that a function > never returns NULL. I saw some ECF_* flags, but the attribute seems > sufficient. I considered using nonnull(0), but then it would have been > confusing that the version of nonnull without arguments applies only to > parameters and not the return value.
I can't comment on the patch itself, but could there also be an attribute "returns_null", for functions that *always* return NULL? This may sound weird, but I know of at least one API that exposes such functions: CPython's exception-handling API: see e.g. http://docs.python.org/2/c-api/exceptions.html#PyErr_NoMemory and various other functions that have "Return value: Always NULL." This allows the user to write one-liners like: return PyErr_NoMemory(); Hope this is helpful Dave
