c++ - What part of dereferencing NULL pointers causes undesired behavior?

Question

I am curious as to what part of the dereferencing a NULL ptr causes undesired behavior. Example:

//  #1
someObj * a;
a = NULL;
(*a).somefunc();   // crash, dereferenced a null ptr and called one of its function
                   // same as a->somefunc();

//  #2
someObj * b;
anotherObj * c;
b = NULL;
c->anotherfunc(*b);   // dereferenced the ptr, but didn't call one of it's functions

Here we see in #2 that I didn't actually try to access data or a function out of b, so would this still cause undesired behavior if *b just resolves to NULL and we're passing NULL into anotherfunc() ?

Answer 1

There is a concept, in the standard, of a null pointer value. This is a distinct value that causes undefined behavior when the program attempts to access memory through it. In practice, lots of modern implementations have it crash the program, which is useful behavior. After all, such an attempt is a mistake.

The name of the null pointer value is 0, or any other constant integral expression in pointer context (like 3 - 3, for example). There is also a NULL macro, which has to evaluate to 0 in C++ but can be (void *)0 in C (C++ insists more on pointers being type-safe). In C++0x, there will be an explicit value called nullptr, finally giving the null pointer an explicit name.

The value of the null pointer doesn't have to be an actual zero, although it is on all implementations I'm aware of, and the odd computers where that didn't work have mostly been retired.

You're misstating what happens in your last example. *b doesn't resolve into anything. Passing *b is undefined behavior, which means the implementation can do anything it likes with it. It may or may not be flagged as an error, and may or may not cause problems. The behavior can change for no apparent reason, and so doing this is a mistake.

If a called function is expecting a pointer value, passing it a null pointer value is perfectly legitimate, and the called function should handle it properly. Dereferencing a null pointer value is never legitimate.