Got a crash with a strange pointer value?

Ever had a crash with a pointer value of 0xcdcdcdcd or 0xdddddddd or 0xfeeefeee?

You have? Sooner or later when you work with C or C++ you’ll bump into one of these crashes. You will no doubt try to reproduce the crash and that’s when you’ll probably notice this unusual value has repeated itself. Perhaps the value is significant, perhaps it is telling you something?

I’ve has just written an article about the unusual bit patterns you can find in variables on the stack or in the various Win32 heaps or in the CRT heap. The article closes with some suggestions on how to prevent these errors from occurring.

A few minutes spent reading about the bit patterns may help you see these bit patterns less frequently and dig you out of any 0xfeeefeee hole you may have fallen into.