why C++ recognizes an uninitialized raw-pointer as true?

Question

Why the following code produces a seg-fault

//somewhere in main
    ...
    int *pointer;
    if(pointer)
        cout << *pointer;
    ...

But slightly changed following code doesn't

//somewhere in main
    ...
    int *pointer = nullptr;
    if(pointer)
        cout << *pointer;
    ...

the question is what in C++ makes an uninitialized pointer true - and leads to a crash

Answer 1

Because your unitialized Pointer gets implicitly converted to a boolean. Where 0 converts to false and every other value to true.