Question

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?

Answer 1

Only the first and the last are null pointers. The others are results of reinterpret_cast and thus operate on implementation defined pointer values. Whether the behavior is undefined for them depends on whether there is an object at the address you casted to.