What is a null pointer ?

There are times when it’s necessary to have a pointer that doesn’t point to anything. The macro NULL, defined in , has a value that’s guaranteed to be different from any valid pointer. NULL is a literal zero, possibly cast to void* or char*.

Some people, notably C++ programmers, prefer to use 0 rather than NULL.

The null pointer is used in three ways:

1) To stop indirection in a recursive data structure.
2) As an error value.
3) As a sentinel value.