True, it's not dereferencing NULL at the machine level, but in C++ terms, it really is dereferencing the pointer. Evaluating the expression "p" (or "p->m", whic

True, it's not dereferencing NULL at the machine level, but in C++ terms, it really is dereferencing the pointer. Evaluating the expression "p" (or "p->m", which is equivalent to "(p).m") is dereferencing. What it isn't doing is reading or writing at or near location 0.