Dereferencing the null pointer

Posted by zilgo on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by zilgo
Published on 2010-03-24T22:32:12Z Indexed on 2010/03/24 22:43 UTC
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The standard says that dereferencing the null pointer leads to undefined behaviour. But what is "the null pointer"? In the following code, what we call "the null pointer":

struct X
{
  static X* get() { return reinterpret_cast<X*>(1); }
  void f() { }
};

int main()
{
  X* x = 0;
  (*x).f(); // the null pointer?  (1)

  x = X::get();
  (*x).f(); // the null pointer?  (2)

  x = reinterpret_cast<X*>( X::get() - X::get() );
  (*x).f(); // the null pointer?  (3)

  (*(X*)0).f(); // I think that this the only null pointer here (4)
}

My thought is that dereferencing of the null pointer takes place only in the last case. Am I right? Is there difference between compile time null pointers and runtime according to C++ Standard?

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