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For example, in x86 real mode, the address 0000:0000 is readable and also usually writable, and dereferencing a pointer to that address is a perfectly valid but typically unwanted action that may lead to undefined but non-crashing behavior in the application; if a null pointer is represented as a pointer to that address, dereferencing it will ...
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.
A null Animal* pointer is possible, and could be useful as a place-holder, but may not be used for direct dispatch: a->MakeSound() is undefined behavior if a is a null pointer. The null object pattern solves this problem by providing a special NullAnimal class which can be instantiated bound to an Animal pointer or reference.
In C++, because dereferencing a null pointer is undefined behavior, compiler optimizations may cause other checks to be removed, leading to vulnerabilities elsewhere in the code. [29] [30] Some lists may also include race conditions (concurrent reads/writes to shared memory) as being part of memory safety (e.g., for access control).
When a dangling pointer is used after it has been freed without allocating a new chunk of memory to it, this becomes known as a "use after free" vulnerability. [4] For example, CVE-2014-1776 is a use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 through 11 [5] being used by zero-day attacks by an advanced persistent threat. [6]
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 ...
Nullable types are a feature of some programming languages which allow a value to be set to the special value NULL instead of the usual possible values of the data type.In statically typed languages, a nullable type is an option type, [citation needed] while in dynamically typed languages (where values have types, but variables do not), equivalent behavior is provided by having a single null ...
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 ).