Wild Pointer

In C, a wild pointer is a pointer that has not been initialized or has been assigned an arbitrary or invalid memory address. Wild pointers are considered dangerous because they point to an unknown location in memory, and dereferencing them can lead to undefined behavior, crashes, or unexpected results.

Here's an example of a wild pointer:

int *wildPtr; // This is a wild pointer since it hasn't been initialized

If you attempt to access the value pointed to by a wild pointer or modify it, you risk causing memory corruption or segmentation faults, as the pointer does not point to a valid memory location.

To avoid creating wild pointers and ensure safer memory access, always initialize pointers before using them:

Using a NULL pointer provides a safe way to handle uninitialized pointers, as NULL is a well-defined and safe value that you can check before dereferencing the pointer. For example:

By initializing pointers to NULL or valid memory addresses and checking for NULL before dereferencing them, you can minimize the risk of wild pointers and improve the stability and reliability of your C programs.