C Interview Questions and Answers
Question: What is a dangling pointer?Answer:A dangling pointer arises when you use the address of an object after its lifetime is over. This may occur in situations like returning addresses of the automatic variables from a function or using the address of the memory block after it is freed. The following code snippet shows this: class Sample { public: int *ptr; Sample(int i) { ptr = new int(i); } ~Sample() { delete ptr; } void PrintVal() { cout << "The value is " << *ptr; } }; void SomeFunc(Sample x) { cout << "Say i am in someFunc " << endl; } int main() { Sample s1 = 10; SomeFunc(s1); s1.PrintVal(); } In the above example when PrintVal() function is called it is called by the pointer that has been freed by the destructor in SomeFunc. |
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