GCC compiling issue [-Wdangling-pointer]

-Wdangling-pointer

-Wdangling-pointer=n

Warn about uses of pointers (or C++ references) to objects with automatic storage duration after their lifetime has ended. This includes local variables declared in nested blocks, compound literals and other unnamed temporary objects. In addition, warn about storing the address of such objects in escaped pointers. The warning is enabled at all optimization levels but may yield different results with optimization than without.

-Wdangling-pointer=1

At level 1 the warning diagnoses only unconditional uses of dangling pointers. For example

int f (int c1, int c2, x)
{
  char *p = strchr ((char[]){ c1, c2 }, c3);
  return p ? *p : 'x';   // warning: dangling pointer to a compound literal
}

In the following function the store of the address of the local variable x in the escaped pointer *p also triggers the warning.

void g (int **p)
{
  int x = 7;
  *p = &x;   // warning: storing the address of a local variable in *p
}

-Wdangling-pointer=2

At level 2, in addition to unconditional uses the warning also diagnoses conditional uses of dangling pointers.

For example, because the array a in the following function is out of scope when the pointer s that was set to point is used, the warning triggers at this level.

void f (char *s)
{
  if (!s)
    {
      char a[12] = "tmpname";
      s = a;
    }
  strcat (s, ".tmp");   // warning: dangling pointer to a may be used
  ...
}

-Wdangling-pointer=2 is included in -Wall.