On C++ and other OOPscenities

In C and C++ we use the preprocessor macro NULL to say a pointer is not pointing to anywhere right now.

The problem with NULL is that underneath it is just a plain 0.

Consider the problem looking at this code excerpt:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

void m(int x)
{
	cout << x << endl;
}

void m(const char* x)
{
	cout << (x == NULL ? "NULL" : x) << endl;
}

int main()
{
  m(12);
  m(NULL);
  return 0;
}

If you try to compile it using g++ 4.6, you will get something like:

test.cpp: In function 'int main()':
test.cpp:19:9: error: call of overloaded 'm(NULL)' is ambiguous
test.cpp:19:9: note: candidates are:
test.cpp:5:6: note: void m(int)
test.cpp:10:6: note: void m(const char*)

Why does the compiler consider the m(NULL) ambiguous?

Because it cannot decide if NULL is actually a pointer (because it is a 0) or an integer (because NULL is… a 0).

C++11 introduces nullptr; a keyword that unambiguously represents a pointer pointing to nowhere; no 0 at all.

Pros:

• It is a strongly typed null pointer, like Java or C# null.
• No ambiguity when trying to pass a null pointer to something accepting an int.
• It is a keyword, so you cannot define it to whatever you want.

Cons:

• If you have some symbol called nullptr used in a lot of places in your code, you will need to edit your source code to rename it.

So, if you change the main method of my example above to:

int main()
{
  m(12);
  m(nullptr);
  return 0;
}

Your code will compile and execute with no problems.

As Joe noted in his comment on this post (thanks Joe!), the type of nullptr is actually nullptr_t, so, you would be also able to overload the m() function to perform different if the argument is nullptr, as shown in this example below:

void m(int x)
{
	cout << x << endl;
}

void m(const char* x)
{
	cout << x << endl;
}

void m(nullptr_t)
{
	cout << "nullptr!" << endl;
}

int main()
{
  m(12);
  m(nullptr);
  return 0;
}