[Chicken-hackers] The use of the null-pointer and null-pointer? procedures

[Peter Bex]

Hi!

I was wondering what use does (null-pointer?) has.
The FFI conversion procedures for c-pointer types already return #f for
NULL pointers, so I don't really see how one could get a null-pointer.

I know there's also the (null-pointer) procedure, but I don't see the
use of that, either, considering the c-pointer conversion procedures
already convert #f to NULL the other way around, too.

It looks like we have two ways to represent the same thing, which seems
a bit redundant.  Also, it's confusing as I've seen mistakes like the
following:

  (let ((obj (some-foreign-lambda-that-returns-a-pointer)))
    (when (null-pointer? obj) (cleanup!) (error "something went wrong"))
    obj)

The above code will generally just work, UNTIL you get a NULL
pointer.  Then you get an error, but not the one you'd expect:

  Error: (null-pointer?) bad argument type - not a pointer-like object: #f

And of course, the cleanup! procedure is *not* run.

Would it be a good idea to deprecate these procedures?

Cheers,
Peter
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