billion-dollar mistake¶
Hoare, C. A. R. (1965). billion-dollar mistake.
Retired. This entry was not a citation. Our extractor stored an inline prose definition from the article as though it were a bibliographic record: the title names a concept rather than a published work, and the citation text names no work at all. The page is kept because links to it still resolve, but it is withdrawn from the reference list. This entry is kept so the citations that pointed at it still resolve, and so the correction is visible rather than silent.
Cited by¶
1 citation across 1 artifact.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Mechanisms¶
- Empty Collection Return
- A codebase that guarantees empty-not-null never suffers the null-reference dereference that Tony Hoare famously called his "billion-dollar mistake."
This sourceReturning an empty collection instead of null is the standard structural remedy at the API boundary.
- A codebase that guarantees empty-not-null never suffers the null-reference dereference that Tony Hoare famously called his "billion-dollar mistake."
Verification¶
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Registry ID ref:070ba71c5844 · see in the full table