FAQ: References and Pointers - Null Pointer

This community-built FAQ covers the “Null Pointer” exercise from the lesson “References and Pointers”.

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This exercise can be found in the following Codecademy content:

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FAQs on the exercise Null Pointer

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What is the purpose of having a null pointer? Why not just initialize the pointer right away?

Sometimes programmer doesn’t know (the initial value)/doesn’t want to initialize in declaration. In such scenarios, nullptr is useful. Reading the following article is helpful,

Where does a pointer point whilst it is assigned nullptr? How does this actually work in the memory?

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It doesn’t point to anything, this means the memory location does not have anything in it (like NULL)