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In C, two null pointers of any type are guaranteed to compare equal. [3] Prior to C23, the preprocessor macro NULL was provided, defined as an implementation-defined null pointer constant in <stdlib.h>, [4] which in C99 can be portably expressed as ((void *)0), the integer value 0 converted to the type void* (see pointer to void type). [5]
Another frequent source of dangling pointers is a jumbled combination of malloc() and free() library calls: a pointer becomes dangling when the block of memory it points to is freed. As with the previous example one way to avoid this is to make sure to reset the pointer to null after freeing its reference—as demonstrated below.
A null pointer has a value reserved for indicating that the pointer does not refer to a valid object. Null pointers are routinely used to represent conditions such as the end of a list of unknown length or the failure to perform some action; this use of null pointers can be compared to nullable types and to the Nothing value in an option type.
The element pc requires ten blocks of memory of the size of pointer to char (usually 40 or 80 bytes on common platforms), but element pa is only one pointer (size 4 or 8 bytes), and the data it refers to is an array of ten bytes (sizeof * pa == 10).
C program source text is free-form code. ... a null pointer constant can be written as 0, with or without explicit casting to a pointer type, ...
In C, variables with static storage duration that are not initialized explicitly are initialized to zero (or null, for pointers). [ 3 ] Not only are uninitialized variables a frequent cause of bugs, but this kind of bug is particularly serious because it may not be reproducible: for instance, a variable may remain uninitialized only in some ...
In C code, segmentation faults most often occur because of errors in pointer use, particularly in C dynamic memory allocation. Dereferencing a null pointer, which results in undefined behavior, will usually cause a segmentation fault. This is because a null pointer cannot be a valid memory address.
It is often abbreviated as NUL (or NULL, though in some contexts that term is used for the null pointer). In 8-bit codes, it is known as a null byte . The original meaning of this character was like NOP —when sent to a printer or a terminal , it has no effect (some terminals, however, incorrectly display it as space ).