What exactly is nullptr?

Question

We now have C++11 with many new features. An interesting and confusing one (at least for me) is the new nullptr.

Well, no need anymore for the nasty mac

Answer 1

Let's say that you have a function (f) which is overloaded to take both int and char*. Before C++ 11, If you wanted to call it with a null pointer, and you used NULL (i.e. the value 0), then you would call the one overloaded for int:

void f(int);
void f(char*);

void g() 
{
  f(0); // Calls f(int).
  f(NULL); // Equals to f(0). Calls f(int).
}

This is probably not what you wanted. C++11 solves this with nullptr; Now you can write the following:

void g()
{
  f(nullptr); //calls f(char*)
}