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Dangling Pointers in C

Dangling pointers in C is used to describe the behavior of a pointer when its target (the variable it is pointing to) has been deallocated or is no longer accessible. In other words, a dangling pointer in C is a pointer that doesn't point to a valid variable of the appropriate type.

geeksforgeeks.org › c language › dangling-void-null-wild-pointers

Dangling, Void , Null and Wild Pointers in C - GeeksforGeeks

January 10, 2025 - A pointer pointing to a memory location that has been deleted (or freed) is called a dangling pointer. Such a situation can lead to unexpected behavior in the program and also serve as a source of bugs in C programs.

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Understanding Dangling Pointers in C - YouTube

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C_82 What is Dangling pointer in C | C Language Tutorials - YouTube

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dangling pointer in c with example | What is Dangling Pointer? ...

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Understanding the Dangling Pointers - YouTube

Dangling, Void , Null and Wild Pointers | GeeksforGeeks - YouTube

Dangling pointer

pointer that does not point to a valid object

Dangling pointers and wild pointers in computer programming are pointers that do not point to a valid object of the appropriate type. These are special cases of memory safety violations. More generally, … Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Dangling_pointer

Dangling pointer - Wikipedia

October 26, 2025 - Another solution would be to somehow guarantee dp is not used again without further initialization. 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.

Cause of dangling pointers

Manual deallocation without dangling reference

Cause of wild pointers

Security holes involving dangling pointers

Avoiding dangling pointer errors

Dangling pointer detection

unstop.com › home › blog › dangling pointer in c language explained (with code examples)

Dangling Pointer In C Language Explained (With Code Examples) // Unstop

March 12, 2024 - A dangling pointer in C is a pointer that points to a memory location that has been freed or is invalid. They lead to undefined behavior, memory leak issues, etc.

boardinfinity.com › blog › dangling-pointer-in-c

Dangling Pointer in C | Board Infinity

January 2, 2025 - But this is dangerous, as misuse of pointers can result in subtle bugs or introductory-level security holes. A dangling pointer in C is a result of a pointer pointing at an address where data has been removed or the memory space has been released.

stackoverflow.com › questions › 17997228 › what-is-a-dangling-pointer

c++ - What is a dangling pointer? - Stack Overflow

A dangling pointer is a pointer that points to invalid data or to data which is not valid anymore, for example:

Class *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:

Object *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.

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Dangling Pointers in C - javatpoint

Dangling Pointers in C with Tutorial or what is c programming, C language with programming examples for beginners and professionals covering concepts, control statements, c array, c pointers, c structures, c union, c strings and more.

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Dangling Pointers in C: Causes, Risks & Prevention

However, improper use of pointers ... is essential. A dangling pointer in C is a pointer that continues to reference a memory location that is no longer valid or has already been freed....

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Dangling Pointer | C Tutorial | CodeWithHarry

This is where the program control comes back to the main() function and the integer variable a becomes unavailable for the rest of the program execution. And the pointer ptr becomes dangling as it points to a memory location that has been freed or deleted from the stack.

geeksforgeeks.org › dsa › dangling-pointer-in-programming

Dangling Pointer in programming - GeeksforGeeks

May 14, 2024 - Dangling Pointer in programming refers to a pointer that doesn’t point to a valid memory location. This usually happens when an object is deleted or deallocated, without modifying the value of the pointer, so it still points to the memory location of the deallocated memory. ... The below example demonstrates a simple program that creates a dangling pointer in C.

wscubetech.com › resources › c-programming › dangling-pointer

Dangling Pointer in C Language (Explained With Examples)

August 29, 2025 - Learn about the dangling pointer in C language with examples. Understand how it is created, the problems it causes, how to avoid it, and more. Read now!

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Dangling Pointer in C - Naukri Code 360

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reddit.com › r/c_programming › dangling pointers

r/C_Programming on Reddit: Dangling Pointers

April 25, 2025 -

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?

When you have a dangling pointer, you've freed the memory (or if it's a pointer to something on the stack the memory it points to is now being used by something else). In this case if you dereference it you might get an error if you free'd it and the page got returned to your OS, or you might get garbage data if something else is using the memory, or everything might just work fine if nothing else has started using that memory. You shouldn't dereference it because it's undefined behaviour and the compiler doesn't have to make any guarantees about what will or will not happen when you do it. This is why you'll get different behaviour depending on lots of factors like the compiler used and optimisation settings.

It is so called undefined behaviour which means it is not specified what will happened. If you are lucky you will get an error/segmentation fault if not your code will run as expected

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Dangling Pointer in C with Example

August 9, 2023 - Put simply, a dangling pointer in C is a pointer that directs to memory that is no longer in use due to deallocation. The creation of these pointers occurs when an object, variable, or memory location is released or deallocated without modifying ...

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Dangling Pointer in C - Scaler Topics

January 6, 2022 - Let us now look at a diagram which represents how a dangling pointer is created. Here, memory occupied by an integer variable is deallocated, and the pointer pointing to the deallocated memory acts as a Dangling Pointer (hanging freely).

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Stop Bugs: Dangling Pointer in C Explained

October 4, 2024 - This power comes with the risk of using memory incorrectly. A dangling pointer in C is a pointer that continues to reference a memory location after the object it points to has been deleted or deallocated.

reddit.com › r/c_programming › how do you prevent dangling pointers in your code?

r/C_Programming on Reddit: How do you prevent dangling pointers in your code?

March 4, 2024 -

I think memory safety is an architectural property, and not of the language.

I'm trying to decide what architectural decisions to take so future team members don't mistakenly create dangling pointers.

Specifically I want to prevent the cases when someone stores a pointer in some struct, and forgets about it, so if the underlying memory is freed or worse, reallocated, we'll have a serious problem.

I have found 3 options to prevent this ...

Thug it out: Be careful while coding, and teach your team to be careful. This is hard.
Never store a pointer: Create local pointers inside functions for easy use, but never store them inside some struct. Use integer indices if necessary. This seems easy to do, and most safe. Example: Use local variable int *x = object->internal_object->data[99]; inside a function, but never store it in any struct.
Use a stack based allocator to delete and recreate the whole state every frame: This is difficult, but game engines use this technique heavily. I don't wish to use it, but its most elegant.

Thanks

good practices and valgrind

Option 1. Use AddressSanitizer to catch memory safety errors, plus SonarLint to find code smells.

Dot Net Tutorials

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Dangling Pointer in C Language with Examples - Dot Net Tutorials

November 17, 2023 - The pointer variable that points to an inactive or dead memory location is called the Dangling Pointer. In other words, we can say that a pointer pointing to a memory location that has been deleted (or freed) is called a dangling pointer in ...

techtarget.com › searchsecurity › tip › How-to-avoid-dangling-pointers-Tiny-programming-errors-leave-serious-security-vulnerabilities

What dangling pointers are and how to avoid them | TechTarget

Line 5 declares a char type pointer "name" that points to a block of memory that can store 20 characters. On Line 7, the block of memory it points to is deallocated, leaving the pointer dangling. This is because it is no longer pointing to a valid memory location, which might be used for another purpose. Note, it's not just incorrect deallocation that can cause dangling pointers; other coding errors, such as premature deallocation and functions returning a nonstatic variable, can also create them.

quora.com › What-is-dangling-pointer-in-c

What is dangling pointer in c? - Quora

Answer (1 of 18): Dangling pointers arise when an object is deleted or de-allocated, without modifying the value of the pointer, so that the pointer still points to the memory location of the de-allocated memory.In short pointer pointing to ...