A pointer that references memory that has been freed or is no longer valid, potentially causing crashes or security vulnerabilities when accessed.
Pointer comes from the physical metaphor of pointing (1940s computing), while 'dangling' evokes something hanging loose without proper support. The term emerged in the 1960s with manual memory management languages like C.
It's like having a house address written down, but the house was demolished - you still have the address, but there's nothing safe at that location anymore. This is why modern languages try to prevent you from keeping 'addresses' to destroyed objects!
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