Set pointers to nil after release?

Question

After releasing objects is it best to set the pointers to nil? Thats what I have been doing, just wanted to ask if its necessary, good practice or overkill?

Answer 1

Usually when programming in C/C++ I set it to null. Why? Because even if you free the memory being pointed, the pointer still holds the address of that freed memory. It can cause a serious access violation problems in code like this:

if(myPointer != null)
{
   doSomething(myPointer);
}

If you had set your pointer to null, this will never happen