Is it good practice to NULL a pointer after deleting it?

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1931126

Question

I'll start out by saying, use smart pointers and you'll never have to worry about this.

What are the problems with the following code?

Foo * p = new Foo;
// (use p)
delete p;
p = NULL;

This was sparked by an answer and comments to another question. One comment from Neil Butterworth generated a few upvotes:

Setting pointers to NULL following delete is not universal good practice in C++. There are times when it is a good thing to do, and times when it is pointless and can hide errors.

There are plenty of circumstances where it wouldn't help. But in my experience, it can't hurt. Somebody enlighten me.

Was it helpful?

Solution

Setting a pointer to 0 (which is "null" in standard C++, the NULL define from C is somewhat different) avoids crashes on double deletes.

Consider the following:

Foo* foo = 0; // Sets the pointer to 0 (C++ NULL)
delete foo; // Won't do anything

Whereas:

Foo* foo = new Foo();
delete foo; // Deletes the object
delete foo; // Undefined behavior

In other words, if you don't set deleted pointers to 0, you will get into trouble if you're doing double deletes. An argument against setting pointers to 0 after delete would be that doing so just masks double delete bugs and leaves them unhandled.

It's best to not have double delete bugs, obviously, but depending on ownership semantics and object lifecycles, this can be hard to achieve in practice. I prefer a masked double delete bug over UB.

Finally, a sidenote regarding managing object allocation, I suggest you take a look at std::unique_ptr for strict/singular ownership, std::shared_ptr for shared ownership, or another smart pointer implementation, depending on your needs.

OTHER TIPS

Setting pointers to NULL after you've deleted what it pointed to certainly can't hurt, but it's often a bit of a band-aid over a more fundamental problem: Why are you using a pointer in the first place? I can see two typical reasons:

  • You simply wanted something allocated on the heap. In which case wrapping it in a RAII object would have been much safer and cleaner. End the RAII object's scope when you no longer need the object. That's how std::vector works, and it solves the problem of accidentally leaving pointers to deallocated memory around. There are no pointers.
  • Or perhaps you wanted some complex shared ownership semantics. The pointer returned from new might not be the same as the one that delete is called on. Multiple objects may have used the object simultaneously in the meantime. In that case, a shared pointer or something similar would have been preferable.

My rule of thumb is that if you leave pointers around in user code, you're Doing It Wrong. The pointer shouldn't be there to point to garbage in the first place. Why isn't there an object taking responsibility for ensuring its validity? Why doesn't its scope end when the pointed-to object does?

I've got an even better best practice: Where possible, end the variable's scope!

{
    Foo* pFoo = new Foo;
    // use pFoo
    delete pFoo;
}

I always set a pointer to NULL (now nullptr) after deleting the object(s) it points to.

  1. It can help catch many references to freed memory (assuming your platform faults on a deref of a null pointer).

  2. It won't catch all references to free'd memory if, for example, you have copies of the pointer lying around. But some is better than none.

  3. It will mask a double-delete, but I find those are far less common than accesses to already freed memory.

  4. In many cases the compiler is going to optimize it away. So the argument that it's unnecessary doesn't persuade me.

  5. If you're already using RAII, then there aren't many deletes in your code to begin with, so the argument that the extra assignment causes clutter doesn't persuade me.

  6. It's often convenient, when debugging, to see the null value rather than a stale pointer.

  7. If this still bothers you, use a smart pointer or a reference instead.

I also set other types of resource handles to the no-resource value when the resource is free'd (which is typically only in the destructor of an RAII wrapper written to encapsulate the resource).

I worked on a large (9 million statements) commercial product (primarily in C). At one point, we used macro magic to null out the pointer when memory was freed. This immediately exposed lots of lurking bugs that were promptly fixed. As far as I can remember, we never had a double-free bug.

Update: Microsoft believes that it's a good practice for security and recommends the practice in their SDL policies. Apparently MSVC++11 will stomp the deleted pointer automatically (in many circumstances) if you compile with the /SDL option.

Firstly, there are a lot of existing questions on this and closely related topics, for example Why doesn't delete set the pointer to NULL?.

In your code, the issue what goes on in (use p). For example, if somewhere you have code like this:

Foo * p2 = p;

then setting p to NULL accomplishes very little, as you still have the pointer p2 to worry about.

This is not to say that setting a pointer to NULL is always pointless. For example, if p were a member variable pointing to a resource who's lifetime was not exactly the same as the class containing p, then setting p to NULL could be a useful way of indicating the presence or absence of the resource.

If there is more code after the delete, Yes. When the pointer is deleted in a constructor or at the end of method or function, No.

The point of this parable is to remind the programmer, during run-time, that the object has already been deleted.

An even better practice is to use Smart Pointers (shared or scoped) which automagically delete their target objects.

As others have said, delete ptr; ptr = 0; is not going to cause demons to fly out of your nose. However, it does encourage the usage of ptr as a flag of sorts. The code becomes littered with delete and setting the pointer to NULL. The next step is to scatter if (arg == NULL) return; through your code to protect against the accidental usage of a NULL pointer. The problem occurs once the checks against NULL become your primary means of checking for the state of an object or program.

I'm sure that there is a code smell about using a pointer as a flag somewhere but I haven't found one.

I'll change your question slightly:

Would you use an uninitialized pointer? You know, one that you didn't set to NULL or allocate the memory it points to?

There are two scenarios where setting the pointer to NULL can be skipped:

  • the pointer variable goes out of scope immediately
  • you have overloaded the semantic of the pointer and are using its value not only as a memory pointer, but also as a key or raw value. this approach however suffers from other problems.

Meanwhile, arguing that setting the pointer to NULL might hide errors to me sounds like arguing that you shouldn't fix a bug because the fix might hide another bug. The only bugs that might show if the pointer is not set to NULL would be the ones that try to use the pointer. But setting it to NULL would actually cause exactly the same bug as would show if you use it with freed memory, wouldn't it?

If you have no other constraint that forces you to either set or not set the pointer to NULL after you delete it (one such constraint was mentioned by Neil Butterworth), then my personal preference is to leave it be.

For me, the question isn't "is this a good idea?" but "what behavior would I prevent or allow to succeed by doing this?" For example, if this allows other code to see that the pointer is no longer available, why is other code even attempting to look at freed pointers after they are freed? Usually, it's a bug.

It also does more work than necessary as well as hindering post-mortem debugging. The less you touch memory after you don't need it, the easier it is to figure out why something crashed. Many times I have relied on the fact that memory is in a similar state to when a particular bug occurred to diagnose and fix said bug.

Explicitly nulling after delete strongly suggests to a reader that the pointer represents something which is conceptually optional. If I saw that being done, I'd start worrying that everywhere in the source the pointer gets used that it should be first tested against NULL.

If that's what you actually mean, it's better to make that explicit in the source using something like boost::optional

optional<Foo*> p (new Foo);
// (use p.get(), but must test p for truth first!...)
delete p.get();
p = optional<Foo*>();

But if you really wanted people to know the pointer has "gone bad", I'll pitch in 100% agreement with those who say the best thing to do is make it go out of scope. Then you're using the compiler to prevent the possibility of bad dereferences at runtime.

That's the baby in all the C++ bathwater, shouldn't throw it out. :)

In a well structured program with appropriate error checking, there is no reason not to assign it null. 0 stands alone as a universally recognized invalid value in this context. Fail hard and Fail soon.

Many of the arguments against assigning 0 suggest that it could hide a bug or complicate control flow. Fundamentally, that is either an upstream error (not your fault (sorry for the bad pun)) or another error on the programmer's behalf -- perhaps even an indication that program flow has grown too complex.

If the programmer wants to introduce the use of a pointer which may be null as a special value and write all the necessary dodging around that, that's a complication they have deliberately introduced. The better the quarantine, the sooner you find cases of misuse, and the less they are able to spread into other programs.

Well structured programs may be designed using C++ features to avoid these cases. You can use references, or you can just say "passing/using null or invalid arguments is an error" -- an approach which is equally applicable to containers, such as smart pointers. Increasing consistent and correct behavior forbids these bugs from getting far.

From there, you have only a very limited scope and context where a null pointer may exist (or is permitted).

The same may be applied to pointers which are not const. Following the value of a pointer is trivial because its scope is so small, and improper use is checked and well defined. If your toolset and engineers cannot follow the program following a quick read or there is inappropriate error checking or inconsistent/lenient program flow, you have other, bigger problems.

Finally, your compiler and environment likely has some guards for the times when you would like to introduce errors (scribbling), detect accesses to freed memory, and catch other related UB. You can also introduce similar diagnostics into your programs, often without affecting existing programs.

Let me expand what you've already put into your question.

Here's what you've put into your question, in bullet-point form:

Setting pointers to NULL following delete is not universal good practice in C++. There are times when:

  • it is a good thing to do
  • and times when it is pointless and can hide errors.

However, there is no times when this is bad! You will not introduce more bugs by explicitly nulling it, you will not leak memory, you will not cause undefined behaviour to happen.

So, if in doubt, just null it.

Having said that, if you feel that you have to explicitly null some pointer, then to me this sounds like you haven't split up a method enough, and should look at the refactoring approach called "Extract method" to split up the method into separate parts.

Yes.

The only "harm" it can do is to introduce inefficiency (an unnecessary store operation) into your program - but this overhead will be insignificant in relation to the cost of allocating and freeing the block of memory in most cases.

If you don't do it, you will have some nasty pointer derefernce bugs one day.

I always use a macro for delete:

#define SAFEDELETE(ptr) { delete(ptr); ptr = NULL; }

(and similar for an array, free(), releasing handles)

You can also write "self delete" methods that take a reference to the calling code's pointer, so they force the calling code's pointer to NULL. For example, to delete a subtree of many objects:

static void TreeItem::DeleteSubtree(TreeItem *&rootObject)
{
    if (rootObject == NULL)
        return;

    rootObject->UnlinkFromParent();

    for (int i = 0; i < numChildren)
       DeleteSubtree(rootObject->child[i]);

    delete rootObject;
    rootObject = NULL;
}

edit

Yes, these techniques do violate some rules about use of macros (and yes, these days you could probably achieve the same result with templates) - but by using over many years I never ever accessed dead memory - one of the nastiest and most difficult and most time consuming to debug problems you can face. In practice over many years they have effectively eliminated a whjole class of bugs from every team I have introduced them on.

There are also many ways you could implement the above - I am just trying to illustrate the idea of forcing people to NULL a pointer if they delete an object, rather than providing a means for them to release the memory that does not NULL the caller's pointer.

Of course, the above example is just a step towards an auto-pointer. Which I didn't suggest because the OP was specifically asking about the case of not using an auto pointer.

"There are times when it is a good thing to do, and times when it is pointless and can hide errors"

I can see two problems: That simple code:

delete myObj;
myobj = 0

becomes to a for-liner in multithreaded environment:

lock(myObjMutex); 
delete myObj;
myobj = 0
unlock(myObjMutex);

The "best practice" of Don Neufeld don't apply always. E.g. in one automotive project we had to set pointers to 0 even in destructors. I can imagine in safety-critical software such rules are not uncommon. It is easier (and wise) to follow them than trying to persuade the team/code-checker for each pointer use in code, that a line nulling this pointer is redundant.

Another danger is relying on this technique in exceptions-using code:

try{  
   delete myObj; //exception in destructor
   myObj=0
}
catch
{
   //myObj=0; <- possibly resource-leak
}

if (myObj)
  // use myObj <--undefined behaviour

In such code either you produce resource-leak and postpone the problem or the process crashes.

So, this two problems going spontaneously through my head (Herb Sutter would for sure tell more) make for me all the questions of the kind "How to avoid using smart-pointers and do the job safely with normal pointers" as obsolete.

There is always Dangling Pointers to worry about.

If you're going to reallocate the pointer before using it again (dereferencing it, passing it to a function, etc.), making the pointer NULL is just an extra operation. However, if you aren't sure whether it will be reallocated or not before it is used again, setting it to NULL is a good idea.

As many have said, it is of course much easier to just use smart pointers.

Edit: As Thomas Matthews said in this earlier answer, if a pointer is deleted in a destructor, there isn't any need to assign NULL to it since it won't be used again because the object is being destroyed already.

I can imagine setting a pointer to NULL after deleting it being useful in rare cases where there is a legitimate scenario of reusing it in a single function (or object). Otherwise it makes no sense - a pointer needs to point to something meaningful as long as it exists - period.

If the code does not belong to the most performance-critical part of your application, keep it simple and use a shared_ptr:

shared_ptr<Foo> p(new Foo);
//No more need to call delete

It performs reference counting and is thread-safe. You can find it in the tr1 (std::tr1 namespace, #include < memory >) or if your compiler does not provide it, get it from boost.

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