Sometimes the programmer fails to initialize the pointer with a valid address, then this type of initialized pointer is known as a dangling pointer in C. Dangling pointer occurs at the time of the object destruction when the object is deleted or de-allocated from memory without modifying the value of the pointer.

Why do we use dangling pointers?

Dangling pointers arise during object destruction, when an object that has an incoming reference is deleted or deallocated, without modifying the value of the pointer, so that the pointer still points to the memory location of the deallocated memory.

What is mean by dangling pointer in C?

A pointer pointing to a memory location that has been deleted (or freed) is called dangling pointer.