Wild Pointers in C: Definition, Risks, and Avoidance
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Wild Pointer
A Pointer in C that has not been initialized till its first use is known as the Wild pointer. A wild pointer points to some random memory location.
Example of Wild Pointer
int main() { int *ptr; /* Ptr is a wild pointer, as it is not initialized Yet */ printf("%d", *ptr); }
How can we avoid Wild Pointers?
We can initialize a pointer at the point of declaration wither by the address of some object/variable or by NULL;
int main() { int val = 5; int *ptr = &val; /* Initializing pointer */ /* Ptr is not a wild pointer, it is pointing to the address of variable val */ printf("%d", *ptr); }