Thread: Dangling Pointers in C

By the defination of Dangling Pointers I don't understand what does exectly it mean in c language

Can anyone tell me what is dangling pointer in my code ?

Code:

#include <stdlib.h>#include <stdio.h>


int main()
{
	int *ptr = malloc(sizeof(*ptr));
	 if( ptr == NULL )                      /*Check for failure. */
     {
       puts( "Memory not allocated" );
       exit( 0 );
     }
    
	puts( "Allocated memory!" );
	
	free(ptr); /*Release memory. */


}

Originally Posted by Salem

In one sense, you don't have a dangling pointer because you free all the memory you allocated.

Does ptr become dangling pointer when we free memory ?

Code:

  free(ptr);

When assigning a null value to it, it is no longer a dangling pointer.

Code:

 ptr=NULL;/* ptr is no longer dangling */

Pretty much that, yes. The main issue with a dangling pointer is that it is one pointing to unallocated memory. When a pointer is declared, if it isn't initialized, it may be dangling because you don't know where it is pointing; but a pointer may also dangle if it was initialized to allocated memory but then the memory is freed. When you then set the pointer to NULL, it is no longer dangling.

Originally Posted by Schol-R-LEA-2

Pretty much that, yes. The main issue with a dangling pointer is that it is one pointing to unallocated memory. When a pointer is declared, if it isn't initialized, it may be dangling because you don't know where it is pointing; but a pointer may also dangle if it was initialized to allocated memory but then the memory is freed. When you then set the pointer to NULL, it is no longer dangling.

Actually if you don't NULL a pointer after freeing the memory and then later attempt to access the memory, you don't know if the memory is in use by some other part of the program. Bottom line, always initialize all pointers to NULL when defined, always check to see if the allocation was successful, and always NULL the pointer immediately after calling free()!!!