Implications of not including NULL in a language?

Question

I know that NULL isn\'t necessary in a programming language, and I recently made the decision not to include NULL in my programming language. Declaration is done by initial

Answer 1

If one accepts the propositions that powerful languages should have some sort of pointer or reference type (i.e. something which can hold a reference to data which does not exist at compile time), and some form of array type (or other means of having a collection of storage slots which are addressable sequentially via integer index), and that slots of the latter should be able to hold the former, and one accepts the possibility that one may have to read some slots of an array of pointers/references before sensible values exist for all of them, then there will be programs which, from a compiler's perspective, will read an array slot before a sensible value has been written to it (trying to ascertain in the general case whether an array slot could be read before it is written would be equivalent to the Halting Problem).

While it would be possible for a language to require that all array slots be initialized with some non-null reference before any of them could be read, in many situations there isn't really anything that could be stored which would be better than null: if an attempt is made to read an as-yet-unwritten array slot and dereference the (non)item contained there, that represents an error, and it would be better to have the system trap that condition than to access some arbitrary object whose sole purpose for existence is to give the array slots some non-null thing they can reference.