Pointers - *p++

[crystal twix]

Hi. I'm trying to understand what my professor says when he refers to
declaring a pointer, and seeing the operator precedence and seeing
what happens when we do things like

p++
*p++
(*p)++ etc,

but he starts out with this declaration
int *p = (int *)0;

Although my compiler does not complain, when I try to do something
like
cout << *p;

I get a Bus Error on the console (I'm using Xcode). What am I doing
wrong here? Thanks.

 

[red floyd]

Hi. I'm trying to understand what my professor says when he refers to
declaring a pointer, and seeing the operator precedence and seeing
what happens when we do things like

p++
*p++
(*p)++ etc,

but he starts out with this declaration
int *p = (int *)0;

Although my compiler does not complain, when I try to do something
like
cout << *p;

I get a Bus Error on the console (I'm using Xcode). What am I doing
wrong here? Thanks.

Dereferencing a NULL pointer.

 

[Michael Tsang]

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Hash: SHA1

Hi. I'm trying to understand what my professor says when he refers to
declaring a pointer, and seeing the operator precedence and seeing
what happens when we do things like

p++
*p++
(*p)++ etc,

but he starts out with this declaration
int *p = (int *)0;

Better to write "int *p=NULL;" instead

Although my compiler does not complain, when I try to do something
like
cout << *p;

p is a pointer object. As the value of p is NULL, dereferencing it becomes
an object that does not exist. The output operation tries to take the value
in the object, however, as the object does not exist, the behaviour is
undefined.

I get a Bus Error on the console (I'm using Xcode). What am I doing
wrong here? Thanks.

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[siddhant3s]

Better to write "int *p=NULL;" instead

I am *not* saying anything against but, I write int* p=0; as it remind
me that in C++ 'NULL' is 'zer0'.

 

[paperab]

I am *not* saying anything against but, I write int* p=0; as it remind
me that in C++ 'NULL' is 'zer0'.

This is not always true. It depends of the implementation of your C++.

 

[Ian Collins]

Hi. I'm trying to understand what my professor says when he refers to
declaring a pointer, and seeing the operator precedence and seeing
what happens when we do things like

p++
*p++
(*p)++ etc,

but he starts out with this declaration
int *p = (int *)0;

If you get into the habit of declaring and initialising pointers at the
point of first use, the discussion is moot.

 

[James Kanze]

Yes. It's a style issue. I too prefer NULL, but I understand
people who prefer 0. Either is "idiomatic". The original:
int *p = (int*)0;
isn't.

This is not always true. It depends of the implementation of
your C++.

It's not necessarily true that NULL expands to the exact string
0, but it must expand to a null pointer constant, i.e. an
integral constant expression evaluating to 0. (It's interesting
that a null pointer constant is not allowed to be a pointer.) 0
is by far the most frequent solution, and 0L was also prevelant
at one time. At least one compiler uses something like
__builtin_null, so that it can warn if NULL is used as an
integer; this is by far the best solution.

 

[James Kanze]

If you get into the habit of declaring and initialising
pointers at the point of first use, the discussion is moot.

He did. He initialized it with a null pointer, then proceeded
with a number of operations which aren't legal on null pointers.

 

[siddhant3s]

This is not always true. It depends of the implementation of your C++.

Read http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#null