portability question

[Sheldon Simms <wsxyz6294 yahoo com>]

Hi everyone,

I just started reading some of the GLib source code
for the first time and I have noticed that the code
often makes "nonportable" assumptions about the C
implementation like arbitrary pointer/int
interchangability, twos-complement representation of
negative integers, "all-zeros" representation of a
null pointer.

I say "nonportable" in quotes, because I suspect that
these things actually are portable to all platforms of
current interest, but still I wonder why the code was
written this way when it's really not difficult to
write the code without making these assumptions.

Are there any reasons?


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