Re: [PATCH v1 19/25] man/man3type/void.3type: HISTORY: Update first POSIX appearance of void(3type)

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi Adam,

On Sat, Jan 10, 2026 at 10:32:30PM +0000, Adam Sampson wrote:
> Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> writes:
> 
> > I think 'void*' is important enough that it would be useful to dig in
> > its history further.  Was it an invention of C89?  Or was it an
> > extension in some existing compilers?  If the latter, it would be
> > interesting to document which systems had it before C89.
> 
> From evidence in the utzoo Usenet archive, the idea was around before
> the ANSI C effort.
> 
> The first mention of "void *" is in November 1982, where Ken Dalka
> (ihuxe!dalka) observed in net.lang.c that void * was accepted as a type.
> He didn't say which compiler was being used, but an earlier post said
> ihuxe "runs USG 4.0 UN*X".

Huh, would this be the "System IV" that was never externally released?
The year seems consistent with that.  Interesting!  According to
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Manuals/Unix_4.0/README>,
the official name of this would be PWB 4.0. or Unix/TS 4.0.

Should we document it as Unix/TS 4.0?

This predates the C Committee by one year, BTW.

It would also be useful to know when the BSD lineage incorporated void*.

> The next is from Mary Ann Horton (mark@cbosgd.UUCP) in January 1984,
> also in net.lang.c, who suggests using "(void *) 0" as a definition of
> NULL, giving a varargs function with args terminated by NULL as an
> example.
> 
> Then in March 1984, Doug Gwyn (gwyn@Brl-Vld.ARPA) says, as part of a
> discussion about casting the result of malloc in net.unix-wizards:
> 
> > The C Language Standards Committee was talking about adding
> > (void *) to the language as a generic pointer type.  Perhaps
> > that will eventually help...
>
> It then shows up in various posts in both of those groups throughout
> 1984, including a summary by Henry Spencer in June 1984 of Larry
> Rosler's presentation on the ANSI C project at Usenix saying:
> 
> > II.  "void *" is a new kind of pointer, which cannot be dereferenced but
> > 	can be assigned to any other type of pointer without a cast.  The
> > 	idea here is that "char *" is no longer required to be the
> > 	"universal" pointer type which can point to anything.  So for
> >	example, the declaration of fread earlier really should go:
> >
> >		extern int fread(void *, int, int, FILE *);
> >
> >	(People who have machines where all pointers have the same
> >	representation, don't complain.  You are lucky.  Others aren't.)
> 
> Thanks,

Thanks a lot!


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

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