This does not make sense. Null is not the same as zero and neither is the same as an all-zeros bit pattern. A memory word interpreted as an integer has no meaningful null value. A memory word interpreted as a pointer may or may not have a special bit pattern (which may or may not be the same as integer zero) that represents a pointer to nowhere; it all depends on language semantics. The address 0x0 can be perfectly valid on some architectures. Even though in C the literal 0 denotes a null pointer constant, it does not mean that the value of a null pointer is literally zero.