Why do command line arguments generate segmentation fault when accessed? - c

I am getting segmentation faults when trying to read command line arguments char-by-char.
I have the following code:
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
int i,j;
for(i=1;i<argc;i++)
{
for(j=0;argv[i][j]!=0;j++)
{
printf("%c",argv[i][j]);
}
//printf("%c",argv[i][0]);
}
}
This code runs, but when I uncomment the line printf("%c",argv[i][0]); I get a segmentation fault.
Why exactly is this considered access to unallocated memory and how am I supposed to parse command line arguments without checking their content?
Specifically, I want to know if the argument is of the form: <+->e<0-9A-F> meaning plus or minus followed by 'e' followed by a single hex digit. How would one go about this in c?

The condition for your inner loop is incorrect:
argv[i][j]!="\0"
You're comparing a single char against a string constant. That string constant decays into the address it's stored at, which is what's actually being compared against the elements of the argument string. As a result, because you're not correctly checking for the terminating null byte, you read past the end of the string. Doing so triggers undefined behavior which in your case causes you code to sometimes crash and sometimes not.
What you want here is to check for the value 0:
argv[i][j]!=0

Related

CS50 Caesar segmentation fault explanation

I can compile this code with no issues, the idea right now is just to test that I can successfully enter the cipher key(command line argument) without any issues before moving on. I was having no luck with finding out why my code would always return a segmentation fault, then I saw a tip to put a '*' before argv[1] in the 4th line, and that seems to solve all my issues. Can someone please explain to me why this is?
int main(int argc, string argv[]) // command line argument for the cipher key
{
int key;
if (argc == 2 && isdigit(*argv[1])) //the line in question
{
key = atoi(argv[1]); // convert the digit string into an integer
}
else
{
printf("Usage:./caeser key\n");
return 1;
}
printf ("%i\n",key);
}
then I saw a tip to put a '*' before argv[1] in the 4th line, and that seems to solve all my issues. Can someone please explain to me why this is?
This means, before you saw that tip, it looked like this:
isdigit(argv[1])
You are mixing types here.
argv is an array of char*. This means, argv[1] is of type char*.
But isdigit is expecting an argument of type int. You should get some compiler warning for that.
The function expects to get a value that is in range of char or EOF. Passing a pointer is very likely to provide some value way out of range.
If you add the * you dereference your char pointer and take the first character of that string. That is what is expected by isdigit and it works as it should.

How to identify what is causing the Segmentation fault

My code's aim is to take in 2 command line arguments (inclusive of programme name), and to print out responses as shown based on the given 2nd command line argument. If the command line argument is an integer, the user's input is accepted or "Success"and if it as anything else (e.g. a string or more than one command line argument), it will be Null and the error message will be shown. This is for CS50 caesar for those who are familiar
My Code is as follows:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <cs50.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>
int main(int argc,string argv[])
{
char *x = argv[1];
if (argc == 2 && isdigit(x))
{
printf("Success\n");
}
else
{
printf("Usage: ./caesar key\n");
}
}
The code compiles but I am given a segmentation fault. I am aware segmentation fault is the programme trying to access something outside of the allocated memory for the array (correct me if I am wrong) but I did specify argv[1].
The isdigit takes as an argument, an int, that contains a character code as an unsigned character.
Unfortunately isdigit is often implemented as a macro, and written in such a way that you do not get a warning if you pass in the wrong kind of data. You're passing in a pointer to a character, which is not a single character. The first character of the first command line argument is x[0]. However this must be converted to unsigned char.
Therefore these are wrong
isdigit(x)
isdigit(x[0])
What you could use to check if the first character of the first argument is a digit is
isdigit((unsigned char)x[0]))
but in the end what you want is not to check if any of these are digits, but to convert the string to an integer, and see if an error occurs - use strto(u)l for x and see if it succeeded; then check the range of the resulting value.

Why is this C code giving me a bus error?

I have, as usual, been reading quite a few posts on here. I found a particular useful posts on bus errors in general, see here. My problem is that I cannot understand why my particular code is giving me an error.
My code is an attempt to teach myself C. It's a modification of a game I made when I learned Java. The goal in my game is to take a huge 5049 x 1 text file of words. Randomly pick a word, jumble it and try to guess it. I know how to do all of that. So anyway, each line of the text file contains a word like:
5049
must
lean
better
program
now
...
So, I created an string array in C, tried to read this string array and put it into C. I didn't do anything else. Once I get the file into C, the rest should be easy. Weirder yet is that it complies. My problem comes when I run it with ./blah command.
The error I get is simple. It says:
zsh: bus error ./blah
My code is below. I suspect it might have to do with memory or overflowing the buffer, but that's completely unscientific and a gut feeling. So my question is simple, why is this C code giving me this bus error msg?
#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
//Preprocessed Functions
void jumblegame();
void readFile(char* [], int);
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
jumblegame();
}
void jumblegame()
{
//Load File
int x = 5049; //Rows
int y = 256; //Colums
char* words[x];
readFile(words,x);
//Define score variables
int totalScore = 0;
int currentScore = 0;
//Repeatedly pick a random work, randomly jumble it, and let the user guess what it is
}
void readFile(char* array[5049], int x)
{
char line[256]; //This is to to grab each string in the file and put it in a line.
FILE *file;
file = fopen("words.txt","r");
//Check to make sure file can open
if(file == NULL)
{
printf("Error: File does not open.");
exit(1);
}
//Otherwise, read file into array
else
{
while(!feof(file))//The file will loop until end of file
{
if((fgets(line,256,file))!= NULL)//If the line isn't empty
{
array[x] = fgets(line,256,file);//store string in line x of array
x++; //Increment to the next line
}
}
}
}
This line has a few problems:
array[x] = fgets(line,256,file);//store string in line x of array
You've already read the line in the condition of the immediately preceding if statement: the current line that you want to operate on is already in the buffer and now you use fgets to get the next line.
You're trying to assign to the same array slot each time: instead you'll want to keep a separate variable for the array index that increments each time through the loop.
Finally, you're trying to copy the strings using =. This will only copy references, it won't make a new copy of the string. So each element of the array will point to the same buffer: line, which will go out of scope and become invalid when your function exits. To populate your array with the strings, you need to make a copy of each one for the array: allocate space for each new string using malloc, then use strncpy to copy each line into your new string. Alternately, if you can use strdup, it will take care of allocating the space for you.
But I suspect that this is the cause of your bus error: you're passing in the array size as x, and in your loop, you're assigning to array[x]. The problem with this is that array[x] doesn't belong to the array, the array only has useable indices of 0 to (x - 1).
You are passing the value 5049 for x. The first time that the line
array[x] = ...
executes, it's accessing an array location that does not exist.
It looks like you are learning C. Great! A skill you need to master early is basic debugger use. In this case, if you compile your program with
gcc -g myprogram.c -o myprogram
and then run it with
gdb ./myprogram
(I am assuming Linux), you will get a stack dump that shows the line where bus error occurred. This should be enough to help you figure out the error yourself, which in the long run is much better than asking others.
There are many other ways a debugger is useful, but this is high on the list. It gives you a window into your running program.
You are storing the lines in the line buffer, which is defined inside the readFile function, and storing pointers to it in the arary. There are two problems with that: you are overwriting the value everytime a new string is read and the buffer is in the stack, and is invalid once the function returns.
You have at least a few problems:
array[x] = fgets(line,256,file)
This stores the address of line into each array element. line in no longer valid when readFile() returns, so you'll have an array of of useless pointers. Even if line had a longer lifetime, it wouldn't be useful to have all your array elements having the same pointer (they'd each just point to whatever happened to be written in the buffer last)
while(!feof(file))
This is an antipattern for reading a file. See http://c-faq.com/stdio/feof.html and "Using feof() incorrectly". This antipattern is likely responsible for your program looping more than you might expect when reading the file.
you allocate the array to hold 5049 pointers, but you simply read however much is in the file - there's no checking for whether or not you read the expected number or to prevent reading too many. You should think about allocating the array dynamically as you read the file or have a mechanism to ensure you read the right amount of data (not too little and not too much) and handle the error when it's not right.
I suspect the problem is with (fgets(line,256,file))!=NULL). A better way to read a file is with fread() (see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstdio/fread/). Specify the FILE* (a file stream in C), the size of the buffer, and the buffer. The routine returns the number of bytes read. If the return value is zero, then the EOF has been reached.
char buff [256];
fread (file, sizeof(char), 256, buff);

how to form an array of numbers , taken input from a file in C

The program should be able to make an array of numbers from a text file which reads like this
The data is given as this
123 2132 1100909 3213 89890
my code for it is
char a;
char d[100];
char array[100];
a=fgetc(fp) // where fp is a file pointer
if (a=='')
{
d[count1]='/0';
strcpy(&array[count],d);
count=count+1;
memset(d,'\0',100)
count1=0;
}
else
{
d[count1]=a;
count1=count1+1;
}
a=fgetc(fp);
i am getting segmentation fault now . want to store each number in the array so that i can do sorting on it
Your (first) problem is here:
d[count1]='/0';
strcpy(&array[count],d);
You have written '/0', which isn't what you think it is. Assuming you meant '\0' (a null char literal), then you appear to be trying to manually terminate the string d before calling strcpy(). The problem is that what actually gets written to d is not a null byte, and so d is not null-terminated, and then strcpy() goes off and starts reading random memory after it, and copying that memory into array, until either the reading or the writing ends up outside of memory you're allowed to access, and you get a segmentation fault.
You also have some confusion about that array is. It's declared as an array of 100 chars, but you're treating it like it's an array of strings. Perhaps you meant to declare it as char *array[100] ?
Hmm...as a first approximation, to read a single number, consider using fscanf("%d", &number);. To store the numbers you read, you'll probably want to create an array of numbers (e.g., int numbers[100];). To read more than one number, use a loop to read the numbers into the array.
Sidenote: fscanf isn't particularly forgiving of errors in the input (among other things) so for production code, you probably want to read a string, and parse numbers out of that, but for now, it looks like you probably just need to get something that works for correct input, not worry about handling incorrect input gracefully.
Is this actually how the code is written?
In d[count1]='/0'; I think you mean d[count1]='\0'; (already mentioned by Daniel Pryden).
There is also a semicolon missing at the end of memset(d,'\0',100)

why does this happen (see image)?

Why does the following have the effect it does - it prints a terminal full of random characters and then exits leaving a command prompt that produces garbage when you type in it. (I tried it because I thought it would produce a seg fault).
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
char* s = "lololololololol";
while(1){
printf("%c", *s);
s++;
}
}
it was compiled with:
gcc -std=c99 hello.c
It will eventually seg fault, but before that it'll print out whatever bytes are in the same page. That's why you see random chars on the screen.
Those may well include escape sequences to change (say) the character encoding of the console. That's why you end up with gibberish when you type on the console after it's exited, too.
Because you have an infinite loop (while(1)), and you keep getting the current value of pointer (*s), and then moving the pointer one char forward (s++). This has the effect of marching well past the end of the string into "garbage" (uninitialized memory), which gets printed to the console as a result.
In addition to what everyone else said in regards to you ignoring the string terminal character and just printing willy-nilly what's in memory past the string, the reason why your command prompt is also "garbage" is that by printing a particular "unprintable" character, your terminal session was left in a strange character mode. (I don't know which character it is or what mode change it does, but maybe someone else can pipe in about it that knows better than I.)
You are just printing out what is in memory because your loop doesn't stop at the end of the string. Each random byte is interpreted as a character. It will seg fault when you reach the end of the memory page (and get into unreadable territory).
Expanding ever so slightly on the answers given here (which are all excellent) ... I ran into this more than once myself when I was just beginning with C, and it's an easy mistake to make.
A quick tweak to your while loop will fix it. Everyone else has given you the why, I'll hook you up with the how:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
char *s = "lolololololololol";
while (*s != '\0') {
printf("%c", *s);
s++;
}
}
Note that instead of an infinite loop (while(1)), we're doing a loop check to ensure that the pointer we're pulling isn't the null-terminator for the string, thus avoiding the overrun you're encountering.
If you're stuck absolutely needing while(1) (for example, if this is homework and the instructor wants you to use it), use the break keyword to exit the loop. The following code smells, at least to me, but it works:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
char *s = "lolololololololol";
while (1) {
if (*s == '\0')
break;
printf("%c", *s);
s++;
}
}
Both produce the same console output, with no line break at the end:
lolololololololol
Your loop doesn't terminate, so println prints whatever is in the memory after the text you write; eventually it will access memory it is not allowed to read, causing it to segfault.
You can change the loop as the others suggested, or you can take advantage of fact that in c, zero is false and null (which terminates all strings) is also zero, so you can construct the loop as:
while (*s) {
Rather than:
while (*s != '\0')
The first one may be more difficult to understand, but it does have the advantage of brevity so it is often used to save a bit of typing.
Also, you can usually get back to your command prompt by using the 'reset' command, typing blindly of course. (type Enter, reset, Enter)

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