Issues with Pointers (delete)

Question

While practicing binary tree implementations, I realised deallocating dynamically allocated memory using the delete keyword does not set the pointer back to NULL.

The same piece of code I wrote few months ago using Code::Blocks/DevC++ is throwing exceptions on VS. IIRC, delete used to set pointers back to NULL after deallocating memory (or was it just me explicitly setting pointers back to NULL after delete? Σ(ﾟДﾟ)). Is this a compiler issue wherein different compilers react differently?

Answer 1

It's never been the standard to null a pointer with the delete keyword. But delete is defined and implemented by the compiler's runtimes, so yes, compilers handle the delete operator differently. With Microsoft's compiler it has never nulled the pointer

Answer 2

In my experience, deleting a pointer won't set it to null, you have to set it to null explicitly.

Answer 3

It has never NULLed the pointer with Linux compiler either, freeing a pointer just tell the computer that the memory address in it will not be used anymore, so it removes the right to use it.

Basically, it can't change the value in the variable as the pointer is passed by value.

If you wanted to make it NULLed, you'll have to do something like this :
void myDelete(void ** ptr){
if(ptr){
delete *ptr;
*ptr=NULL;
}
}