> My point is different: it's just not true that if a parameter is a pointer, then as a general requirement you have to check at runtime whether that pointer is

> My point is different: it's just not true that if a parameter is a pointer, then as a general requirement you have to check at runtime whether that pointer is non-NULL. It drives me nuts when I see these checks sprinkled throughout a codebase. My point is that if you only ever use pointer arguments to indicate that the argument is optional, then the checks are required.