A dangling pointer is a pointer that points to invalid data or to data which is not valid anymore, for example:
CopyClass *object = new Class();
Class *object2 = object;
delete object;
object = nullptr;
// now object2 points to something which is not valid anymore
This can occur even in stack allocated objects:
CopyObject *method() {
Object object;
return &object;
}
Object *object2 = method();
// object2 points to an object which has been removed from stack after exiting the function
The pointer returned by c_str may become invalid if the string is modified afterwards or destroyed. In your example you don't seem to modify it, but since it's not clear what you are going to do with const char *name it's impossible to know it your code is inherently safe or not.
For example, if you store the pointer somewhere and then the corresponding string is destroyed, the pointer becomes invalid. If you use const char *name just in the scope of new_foo (for example, for printing purposes) then the pointer will remain valid.
A dangling pointer is a (non-NULL) pointer which points to unallocated (already freed) memory area.
The above example should be correct given that the string is not modified through new_foo.
Dangling Pointers
How do you prevent dangling pointers in your code?
Why is this dangling-gsl warning invoked?
Is the compiler bugged or is my code wrong (Werror=dangling-reference)?
Videos
The lecture notes of my professor mention that when u deference a dangling pointer, you would get an error, but I am not getting error, rather different answers on different compilers, what's happening here?