What is Dangling pointer?

A pointer that still points to a region whose lifetime has ended. Typical cases are a pointer after the memory was released with free, and a pointer to a local variable after the function has returned. Reading or writing through it (use after free) or freeing it again (double free) is undefined behavior, and may appear to work for a while before causing hard-to-trace failures elsewhere. It is prevented by assigning NULL after free and by not returning the address of a local variable from a function, among other measures.

Japanese name: ダングリングポインタ

Dangling pointer appears in 1 practice question across 1 topic, including C Programming Basics.

Field: C Programming Basics