Re: [Caml-list] NULL as a caml value

[Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

From: Christopher Quinn <cq@htec.demon.co.uk>

> > Yes, NULL is valid, as are all word-aligned addresses outside of the
> > Caml heap.
> 
> Does it even need to be word aligned?
> If Is_long() tests positive the 'pointer' is also ignored.
> I hope I have not erred!?

Sure, then this is only an integer, and the GC does not follow integers.
Someone even suggested that you can avoid the strange scenario I
described in my previous mail by "marking" pointers, that is or-ing
them with 1. If they are word aligned, then you can easily recover the
original.

Otherwise, looking at the runtime's source, I see nothing that would
prevent from using any (even non-aligned) pointer outside of the caml
heaps to be cast to a value, but the manual does not allow it
explicitly, so this may mean that such non-aligned even values could
be used for something else. (Actually they are already used for
compaction.)

Jacques
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