From: Matthieu Moy Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 11:55:32 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/3] config: add hashtable for config parsing & retrieval Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <1403518300-23053-3-git-send-email-tanayabh@gmail.com> Tanay Abhra writes: > +/* for NULL values, 'util' for each `string_list_item` is flagged as 1 */ It's a void *, so just saying that it is flagged as 1 does not say how it's encoded. How about "... is an 'int *' pointing to the value 1". And actually, you can save one malloc by encoding the value directly in the util pointer itself like #define NULL_FLAG (void *)1 item->util = NULL_FLAG; I find this a bit ugly, but I think Git already uses this in a few places (git grep 'void \*) *1' for examples). Or you can use a pointer to a single static value: static const int boolean_null_flag = 1; // Or even without = 1. and then item->util = &boolean_null_flag; -- Matthieu Moy http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/