The problem here, as explained in other comments, is that the pointer is being dereference without being properly initialized. Operating systems like Linux keep the lowest addresses (eg first 32MB: 0x00_0000 -0x200_0000) out of the virtual address space of a process. This is done because dereferencing zeroed non-initialized pointers is a common mistake, like in this case. So when this type of mistake happens, instead of actually reading a random variable that happens to be at address 0x0 (but not the memory address the pointer would be intended for if initialized properly), the pointer would be reading from a memory address outside of the process's virtual address space. This causes a page fault, which results in a segmentation fault, and a signal is sent to the process to kill it. That's why you are getting the access violation error.