I'm not saying a special string value, but a wrapper object with an "existence" bit. You can then assume, if the existence bit is flipped right, that the char*

I'm not saying a special string value, but a wrapper object with an "existence" bit. You can then assume, if the existence bit is flipped right, that the char* "exists". This is functionally equivalent, but forces existence checks when they're needed. And by removing "null" from your vocabulary, an entire class of errors disappears. With C this is a bit trickier to ensure. But I think the design pattern can still be useful. And it doesn't make code more complicated, but rather it makes the complicated aspects explicit . Instead of testing that name == null, you test that name.exists is False, and if not you use name.value. And you make null a banned word in your codebase. The result is that you _never_ have to ask "is this char* possibly null?". The answer is always "no". So you remove superfluous checks I think this pattern works much better when you have stronger type checking, though...