Editing Dangling pointer (section)

==Cause of wild pointers==

Wild pointers are created by omitting necessary initialization prior to first use. Thus, strictly speaking, every pointer in programming languages which do not enforce initialization begins as a wild pointer.

This most often occurs due to jumping over the initialization, not by omitting it. Most compilers are able to warn about this.

<syntaxhighlight lang="C">
int f(int i)
{
    char *dp;    /* dp is a wild pointer */
    static char *scp;  /* scp is not a wild pointer:
                        * static variables are initialized to 0
                        * at start and retain their values from
                        * the last call afterwards.
                        * Using this feature may be considered bad
                        * style if not commented */
}
</syntaxhighlight>