[c] Difference between dangling pointer and memory leak

I don't understand the difference between a dangling pointer and a memory leak. How are these two terms related?

You can think of these as the opposites of one another.

When you free an area of memory, but still keep a pointer to it, that pointer is dangling:

char *c = malloc(16);
free(c);
c[1] = 'a'; //invalid access through dangling pointer!

When you lose the pointer, but keep the memory allocated, you have a memory leak:

void myfunc()
{
    char *c = malloc(16);
} //after myfunc returns, the the memory pointed to by c is not freed: leak!

Memory leak: When there is a memory area in a heap but no variable in the stack pointing to that memory.

char *myarea=(char *)malloc(10);

char *newarea=(char *)malloc(10);

myarea=newarea;

Dangling pointer: When a pointer variable in a stack but no memory in heap.

char *p =NULL;

A dangling pointer trying to dereference without allocating space will result in a segmentation fault.

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

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h> 
 void  main()
 {
    int *ptr = (int *)malloc(sizeof(int));
    // After below free call, ptr becomes a 
    // dangling pointer
    free(ptr); 
 }

for more information click HERE

Pointer helps to create user defined scope to a variable, which is called Dynamic variable. Dynamic Variable can be single variable or group of variable of same type (array) or group of variable of different types (struct). Default local variable scope starts when control enters into a function and ends when control comes out of that function. Default global vairable scope starts at program execution and ends once program finishes.

But scope of a dynamic variable which holds by a pointer can start and end at any point in a program execution, which has to be decided by a programmer. Dangling and memory leak comes into picture only if a programmer doesnt handle the end of scope.

Memory leak will occur if a programmer, doesnt write the code (free of pointer) for end of scope for dynamic variables. Any way once program exits complete process memory will be freed, at that time this leaked memory also will get freed. But it will cause a very serious problem for a process which is running long time.

Once scope of dynamic variable comes to end(freed), NULL should be assigned to pointer variable. Otherwise if the code wrongly accesses it undefined behaviour will happen. So dangling pointer is nothing but a pointer which is pointing a dynamic variable whose scope is already finished.

A pointer pointing to a memory location that has been deleted (or freed) is called dangling pointer. There are three different ways where Pointer acts as dangling pointer.

1. De-allocation of memory
2. Function Call
3. Variable goes out of scope

—— from https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dangling-void-null-wild-pointers/

Dangling Pointer

If any pointer is pointing the memory address of any variable but after some variable has deleted from that memory location while pointer is still pointing such memory location. Such pointer is known as dangling pointer and this problem is known as dangling pointer problem.

#include<stdio.h>

  int *call();

  void main(){

      int *ptr;
      ptr=call();

      fflush(stdin);
      printf("%d",*ptr);

   }

 int * call(){

   int x=25;
   ++x;
   return &x;
 }

Output: Garbage value

Note: In some compiler you may get warning message returning address of local variable or temporary

Explanation: variable x is local variable. Its scope and lifetime is within the function call hence after returning address of x variable x became dead and pointer is still pointing ptr is still pointing to that location.

Solution of this problem: Make the variable x is as static variable. In other word we can say a pointer whose pointing object has been deleted is called dangling pointer.

Memory Leak

In computer science, a memory leak occurs when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations. As per simple we have allocated the memory and not Free other language term say not release it call memory leak it is fatal to application and unexpected crash.

A dangling pointer is one that has a value (not NULL) which refers to some memory which is not valid for the type of object you expect. For example if you set a pointer to an object then overwrote that memory with something else unrelated or freed the memory if it was dynamically allocated.

A memory leak is when you dynamically allocate memory from the heap but never free it, possibly because you lost all references to it.

They are related in that they are both situations relating to mismanaged pointers, especially regarding dynamically allocated memory. In one situation (dangling pointer) you have likely freed the memory but tried to reference it afterwards; in the other (memory leak), you have forgotten to free the memory entirely!