title: Implications of not including NULL in a language?
body: <p>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 initialization, so it is impossible to have an uninitialized variable.  My hope is that this will eliminate the <code>NullPointerException</code> in favor of more meaningful exceptions or simply not having certain kinds of bugs.</p>
  
  <p>Of course, since the language is implemented in C, there will be NULLs used under the covers.</p>
  
  <p>My question is, besides using NULL as an error flag (this is handled with exceptions) or as an endpoint for data structures such as linked lists and binary trees (this is handled with discriminated unions) are there any other use-cases for NULL for which I should have a solution?  Are there any really important implications of not having NULL which could cause me problems?</p>