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I'm wondering about what the C++ standard says about code like this:
int* ptr = NULL; int& ref = *ptr; int* ptr2 = &ref; In practice the result is that ptr2 is NULL but I'm wondering, is this just an implementation detail or is this well defined in the standard?
Under different circumstances a dereferencing of a NULL pointer should result in a crash but here I'm dereferencing it to get a reference which is implemented by the compiler as a pointer so there's really no actual dereferencing of NULL.
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Dereferencing a null pointer always results in undefined behavior and can cause crashes. If the compiler finds a pointer dereference, it treats that pointer as nonnull. As a result, the optimizer may remove null equality checks for dereferenced pointers.
Dereferencing sometimes makes a copy if we do more than dereferencing. Hence, if we use that dereferenced value to initialize a new variable, that is a copy, as shown in the above example.
A NULL pointer dereference occurs when the application dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid, but is NULL, typically causing a crash or exit. Extended Description. NULL pointer dereference issues can occur through a number of flaws, including race conditions, and simple programming omissions.
ABSTRACT Null pointer dereference (NPD) is a widespread vulnerability that occurs whenever an executing program attempts to dereference a null pointer. NPD vulnerability can be exploited by hackers to maliciously crash a process to cause a denial of service or execute an arbitrary code under specific conditions.
Dereferencing a NULL pointer is undefined behavior.
In fact the standard calls this exact situation out in a note (8.3.2/4 "References"):
Note: in particular, a null reference cannot exist in a well-defined program, because the only way to create such a reference would be to bind it to the “object” obtained by dereferencing a null pointer, which causes undefined behavior.
As an aside: The one time I'm aware of that a NULL pointer can be "dereferenced" in a well-defined way is as the operand to the sizeof operator, because the operand to sizeof isn't actually evaluated (so the dereference never actually occurs).
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