Conditions and pointers

Question

If I have something like this

    if(pointer!=NULL&&(*pointer)==x) { ... }

Will it segfault if pointer is NULL? If it is compiler specific, I'd like to know how it is in GCC.

Answer 1

No, because of short circuit evaluation.

If the LHS is false, then the RHS won't be evaluated. Therefore, if it's a NULL pointer, it will never hit the RHS and attempt to dereference it.