I tried to post this once, but it doesn't seem to have worked.   Apologies if you see this twice... Steve -------------------------- Ok, here's my memory of void *, blurred as it may be by time. Void was put into C, but it was actually not necessary by itself -- the default return type was int, and if nobody was using the value there was no particular reason to use void.  So only those who were practitioners of the strong-type religion tended to use it.  A major problem in making C strongly typed was deciding on a return type for malloc.  It had traditionally returned char *, but this required a cast to allow you to allocate things other than characters. I was at a /usr/grp conference at the alcohol-fueled reception talking to Charlie Roberts about the problems of making C more strongly typed.  The topic of malloc came up.  All of a sudden Charlie got a huge grin on his face and said "Hey!  Why don't we have malloc return void *".   It took me a minute or two to even understand what void * could possibly mean, but the idea was an instant winner.   I seem to recall it was done a week or two later.   The idea may have simply ready to be born and others may have had it as well, but this is what I remember of it.  And the experience sticks in my mind as being an almost literal example of being "struck by an idea". Steve ------------------------ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug McIlroy" <doug(a)cs.dartmouth.edu> To: <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org> Cc: Sent: Sun, 05 Nov 2017 19:37:16 -0500 Subject: Re: [TUHS] origins of void* As has been explained, void came from Algol 68 via Steve Bourne. As no object could be declared void, void* was a useless construct. A kind of variable that could point to any object was required to state the type of useful functions like qsort. To avoid proliferation of keywords, the useless void* was pressed into service. I do not remember who suggested that. Doug