replaced 0 with NULL (best practice for C)

[badasahog]

No description provided.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 98.79%. Comparing base (053d905) to head (d9f3f84).

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master    #7244   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   98.79%   98.79%           
=======================================
  Files          81       81           
  Lines       15254    15254           
=======================================
  Hits        15070    15070           
  Misses        184      184           

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[github-actions]

No obvious timing issues in HEAD=replace0withNULL

Generated via commit d9f3f84

Download link for the artifact containing the test results: ↓ atime-results.zip

Task	Duration
R setup and installing dependencies	2 minutes and 40 seconds
Installing different package versions	39 seconds
Running and plotting the test cases	2 minutes and 27 seconds

[MichaelChirico]

Could you please provide a reference for this

[badasahog]

A reference for the fact that NULL is preferred over 0? I think that's common knowledge.

I'm not sure where I would look for the specific guideline that specifies this, but NULL exists for precisely this purpose.

[MichaelChirico]

in that case I am uncommonly ignorant :)

[aitap]

Gustedt even advocates against NULL (and for C23 nullptr), but that depends on the context (this isn't a variadic function call) and we're not C23 yet: https://inria.hal.science/hal-02383654v1/preview/ModernC.pdf#page=149

[badasahog]

I'm not familiar with this document, but I do know that NULL is used elsewhere is the code.

I still affirm my belief that using NULL is a good idea, but if you're confident in this document, would you like me to update the rest of the code?

It would seem hard to believe that 0 is better than NULL, because NULL is more specific, while often evaluating to 0 anyway.

It specifies behavior and intent, while 0 only specifies behavior.

[MichaelChirico]

In fact the Google Guide recommends nullptr but I understood that's more of a C++ thing:

https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html#0_and_nullptr/NULL

[badasahog]

Yeah, that's not available in c99