Types of Pointers

1. Types of Pointers An Introduction

2. Types of Pointers • Generic Pointer • NULL Pointer • Wild Pointer • Dangling Pointer

3. Generic Pointer • Generic pointer is also known as void pointer. • Generic pointer is a special type of pointer which points to the data of no specific data type • For example void *ptr; • Here ptr is a generic pointer. • We can assign the address of any data type to generic pointer after its declaration. • We use generic pointer in two situations. One when we have no idea in advance about the data type of the variable. • Secondly when we have to assign the address of different variables of different data types to the single pointer.

4. NULL Pointers • It is a special type of pointer which points nowhere. • It is usually used to know if the pointer points to null or free the memory during the deallocation of memory in dynamic memory location. • For Example: int *ptr= NULL;

5. Wild Pointers • An uninitialization pointer is known as wild pointer. • Wild pointer holds a garbage value. • It is not pointing any memory location yet. • For Example: int *ptr; is a wild pointer. • After the initialization it will became an ordinary pointer.

6. dangling Pointers • It points to a destroyed variable. • It usually happens during dynamic memory allocation, when the object is destroyed but not free the pointer, it still pointing to the destroyed variable. • For Example: char *dp=malloc(…………) ; /*………code of the program………………………… …………code of the program………………………….*/ free(dp);// Now dp is a dengling pointer here. dp= NULL; // Now dp is not a dengling pointer, it is now a null pointer.