Interesting C question

It was thus said that the Great Cini, Richard once stated: Which is a good value for an x86 based platform. If executed, it maps to INT 3 (if I remember correctly---it's the break point opcode), plus it is distinctive to see (in a hex dump) and it's either going to be a very large unsigned value, or a fair sized negative value and most likely an invalid address if treated as a pointer, so it's sure to cause all sorts of interesting problems and results if used. In my wrappers for malloc()/free(), if I'm running in debug mode, I will fill the allocated memory with such a pattern (and add extra space before and after, so that free() can check to see if this padding has been changed. That alone has caught quite a few problems). The actual pattern I use depends upon the system and so far, here is what I have: #ifdef MIPS # define PADDING 0xB1 # define NULLP 0xB1B1B1B1 #elif defined I386 # define PADDING 0xCC # define NULLP 0xCCCCCCCC #elif defined MC68K # define PADDING 0xA1 # define NULLP 0xA1A1A1A1 #elif defined RS6000 # define PADDING 0xB1 # define NULLP 0xB1B1B1B1 #else # error Please define system #endif The MIPS I think it's an undefined opcode, and the MC68K will treat that as an A-line trap. I will definitely need to add Alpha patterns since I now have access to such a system. -spc (I've picked up a few tricks along the way)