christos@astron.com (Christos Zoulas) writes:

> In article <20070313173252.GY2880@canolog.ninthwonder.com>,
> Allen Briggs  <briggs@netbsd.org> wrote:

>>What's wrong with having a generic pointer type that it's safe to do
>>byte-wise arithmetic on (which is what I've considered caddr_t to
>>be)?
>>
>
> That is the problem "char *" (caddr_t) is not a generic pointer. The
> API's that wanted generic pointers should have had "void *" not
> "caddr_t".  "caddr_t" predates "void" in `c', so back then it was
> used as a generic pointer for the lack of something better. Now we
> have something better and we should be using it.

Was this a wholesale replacement of caddr_t by 'void *'?  Because
doing that would do as much harm as good, since caddr_t does have a
legitimate use that void * can't fill.