C++ a) What is a null pointer? b) Give an example of a function that returns a pointer. Solution a) A pointer that is assigned NULL is called a null pointer. The NULL pointer is a constant with a value of zero defined in several standard libraries, including iostream. It is always a good practice to assign the pointer NULL to a pointer variable in case you do not have exact address to be assigned. Example : int *ptr = NULL; // integer pointer pointing to NULL b) // function that returns a pointer to integer variable int *add(int a, int b){ int c = a+ b; int *iptr = &c; // pointer that stores address of c return iptr; } .