NULL

 

C++

Compiler support

Freestanding and hosted

Language

Standard library

Standard library headers

Named requirements

Feature test macros (C++20)

Language support library

Concepts library (C++20)

Metaprogramming library (C++11)

Diagnostics library

General utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Iterators library

Ranges library (C++20)

Algorithms library

Numerics library

Localizations library

Input/output library

Filesystem library (C++17)

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Concurrency support library (C++11)

Technical specifications

Symbols index

External libraries

 

Utilities library

Language support Type support (basic types, RTTI) Library feature-test macros (C++20) Dynamic memory management Program utilities Coroutine support (C++20) Variadic functions is_constant_evaluated (C++20) is_within_lifetime (C++26) initializer_list (C++11) source_location (C++20) Three-way comparison (C++20) three_way_comparablethree_way_comparable_with (C++20)(C++20) strong_ordering (C++20) weak_ordering (C++20) partial_ordering (C++20) common_comparison_category (C++20) compare_three_way_result (C++20) compare_three_way (C++20) strong_order (C++20) weak_order (C++20) partial_order (C++20) compare_strong_order_fallback (C++20) compare_weak_order_fallback (C++20) compare_partial_order_fallback (C++20)    is_eqis_neqis_ltis_lteqis_gtis_gteq (C++20)(C++20)(C++20)(C++20)(C++20)(C++20)

General utilities Date and time Function objects Formatting library (C++20) bitset hash (C++11) Relational operators (deprecated in C++20) rel_ops::operator!=rel_ops::operator> rel_ops::operator<=rel_ops::operator>= Integer comparison functions cmp_equalcmp_lesscmp_less_than (C++20)(C++20)(C++20)    cmp_not_equalcmp_greatercmp_greater_than (C++20)(C++20)(C++20) in_range (C++20) Swap and type operations swap ranges::swap (C++20) exchange (C++14) declval (C++11) to_underlying (C++23) forward (C++11) forward_like (C++23) move (C++11) move_if_noexcept (C++11) as_const (C++17) Common vocabulary types pair tuple (C++11) optional (C++17) any (C++17) variant (C++17) tuple_size (C++11) tuple_element (C++11) apply (C++17) make_from_tuple (C++17) expected (C++23) Elementary string conversions to_chars (C++17) from_chars (C++17) chars_format (C++17)

 

Type support

Basic types
Fixed width integer types (C++11)
Fixed width floating-point types (C++23)
ptrdiff_t size_t max_align_t (C++11)     byte (C++17)	nullptr_t (C++11) offsetof NULL
Numeric limits
numeric_limits
C numeric limits interface
Runtime type information
type_info type_index (C++11)	bad_typeid bad_cast

 

Defined in header <clocale>
Defined in header <cstddef>
Defined in header <cstdio>
Defined in header <cstdlib>
Defined in header <cstring>
Defined in header <ctime>
Defined in header <cwchar>
#define NULL /*implementation-defined*/

The macro NULL is an implementation-defined null pointer constant, which may be

an integral constant expression rvalue of integer type that evaluates to zero	(until C++11)
an integer literal with value zero, or a prvalue of type std::nullptr_t	(since C++11)

A null pointer constant may be implicitly converted to any pointer and pointer to member type; such conversion results in the null pointer value of that type. If a null pointer constant has integer type, it may be converted to a prvalue of type std::nullptr_t.

Possible implementation

#define NULL 0 //since C++11 #define NULL nullptr

Notes

In C, the macro NULL may have the type void*, but that is not allowed in C++.

Some implementations define NULL as the compiler extension __null with following properties:

• __null is equivalent to a zero-valued integer literal (and thus compatible with the C++ standard) and has the same size as void*, e.g. it is equivalent to ​0​/0L on ILP32/LP64 platforms respectively;
• conversion from __null to an arithmetic type, including the type of __null itself, may trigger a warning.

Example

Run this code

#include <cstddef>
#include <type_traits>
#include <iostream>
#include <typeinfo>
class S;
int main()
{
    int* p = NULL;
    int* p2 = static_cast<std::nullptr_t>(NULL);
    void(*f)(int) = NULL;
    int S::*mp = NULL;
    void(S::*mfp)(int) = NULL;
    auto nullvar = NULL; // a warning may be triggered when compiling with gcc/clang
 
    std::cout << "The type of `nullvar` is " << typeid(nullvar).name() << '\n';
 
    if constexpr(std::is_same_v<decltype(NULL), std::nullptr_t>) {
        std::cout << "NULL implemented with type std::nullptr_t\n";
    } else {
        std::cout << "NULL implemented using an integral type\n";
    }
 
    [](...){}(p, p2, f, mp, mfp); //< suppresses "unused variable" warnings
}

Possible output:

The type of `nullvar` is long
NULL implemented using an integral type

Defect reports

The following behavior-changing defect reports were applied retroactively to previously published C++ standards.

DR	Applied to	Behavior as published	Correct behavior
CWG 903	C++11	constant expressions with zero value such as 1-1 were allowed	only the literal zero is allowed

See also

nullptr(C++11)	the pointer literal which specifies a null pointer value
nullptr_t (C++11)	the type of the null pointer literal nullptr (typedef)