What is Wild Pointer in C

What is Wild Pointer in C

by

What is Wild pointer in C

A Pointer in C that has not been initialized till its first use is known as Wild pointer. A wild pointer points to some random memory location.

int main() {
  int  *ptr;
  /* Ptr is a wild pointer, as it is not initialized Yet */
  printf("%d", *ptr);
}

How can we avoid Wild Pointers ?
We can initialize a pointer at the point of declaration wither by the address of some object/variable or by NULL;

int main() {
  int val = 5;
  int  *ptr = &val; /* Initializing pointer */
  /* Ptr is not a wild pointer, it is pointing to the address of variable val */
  printf("%d", *ptr);
}

What is pointer to a function in C

A pointer to a function is a pointer that stores the address of a function. Unlike regular pointers, function pointers points to code not to memory location where data is stored. We can use a function pointer to call a function which it is pointing to. Here is the Syntax and Example of function pointer.

C program to call a function using function pointer

What is Wild Pointer in C

#include <stdio.h>
 
 
int getSum(int a, int b){
    return a + b;
}
int main() {
    int sum;
    /* f_ptr is a pointer to function which takes 
       two integer as input and returns an integer. 
       We can use addressof operator to get the base 
       address of any function. */
 
    int (*f_ptr)(int, int) = &getSum;
  
    /* Now, calling getSum function using f_ptr */
    sum = (*f_ptr)(2, 5);
    printf("%d\n", sum);
    return 0;
}

Output

7