What are Wild Pointers? How can we avoid? (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 15 Jan, 2026

Uninitialized pointers are known as wild pointers because they point to some arbitrary memory location and may cause a program to crash or behave unexpectedly.

**Example of Wild Pointers

In the below code, p is a wild pointer.

C `

// C program that demonstrated wild pointers int main() { /* wild pointer / int p; /* Some unknown memory location is being corrupted. This should never be done. */ *p = 12; }

`

How can we avoid wild pointers?

If a pointer points to a known variable then it's not a wild pointer.

**Example

In the below program, p is a wild pointer till this points to a.

C `

int main() { int* p; /* wild pointer / int a = 10; / p is not a wild pointer now*/ p = &a; /* This is fine. Value of a is changed */ *p = 12; }

`

If we want a pointer to a value (or set of values) without having a variable for the value, we should explicitly allocate memory and put the value in the allocated memory.

**Example

C `

int main() { int* p = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int)); // This is fine (assuming malloc doesn't return // NULL) *p = 12; }

`

**Note: int *ptr is wild because it points to some garbage memory by default, but int *ptr = NULL is not wild because it clearly points to nothing.