Can someone help me find the segfault here? - c

Question

EDIT: So, it turns out that 'index' was not being returned to 0. Well then. That fixed one segfault. But still getting a different segfault. Working on it.
node* new_node(void){
node* ptr = malloc(sizeof(node));
for (int i = 0; i<27; i++) {
ptr->next[i] = NULL;
}
return ptr;
}
bool load(const char* dictionary)
{
FILE* dict = fopen(dictionary, "r");
node* ptr = new_node;
char word[LENGTH+1];
int index = 0;
for (int c = fgetc(dict); c!=EOF; c = fgetc(dict)){
if(c!='\n'){
word[index]=c;
index++;
}
else {
for(int x=0; x<=index; x++){
int ch = (word[x] == '\'') ? 26 : tolower(word[x])-'a';
if (ptr->next[ch] == NULL){
ptr->next[ch] = new_node;
}
ptr = ptr->next[ch];
}
ptr->end=true;
}
}
return true;
}
I'm trying to implement a trie data structure for a dictionary but my program seems to segfault somewhere in this function. I can't seem to pin it down even with the help of GDB, so can someone give me a hand?
Node is defined as such:
typedef struct node{
bool end;
struct node* next[27];
} node;
Dictionary file:
a
aaa
aaas
aachen
aalborg
aalesund
aardvark
aardvark's
aardvarks
aardwolf
(...)

Answer 1

You have many issues in your code:
When you allocate memory with malloc, it is uninitialised. initialise it directly after allocating it, so that NULL pointers really are null. (calloc, a cousin of ´malloc´, initialises all memory to zero.)
When you loop over the word, you should nor include index:
for (int x = 0; x < index; x++) ...
When you have found the end of a word, you must reset the index to 0. Otherwise, you will append to the old word and overflow the buffer. (You should probably also enforce the upper bound of ´index´.)
Likewise, when you insert a word into the trie, you must reset your pointer for trie traversal to the trie's root. You need two pointers here: A root node pointer and an auxiliary pointer for traversing the trie.
As is, your trie is local to your function. Return the root node, so that other functions can use the trie, or NULL on failure.
Fix these, and you will have a non-crashing function. (It still leaks memory and may not construct the trie properly.)
node *load(const char *dictionary)
{
FILE *dict = fopen(dictionary, "r");
node *head = calloc(1, sizeof(node));
char word[LENGTH + 1];
int index = 0;
for (int c = fgetc(dict); c != EOF; c = fgetc(dict)) {
if (c != '\n') {
word[index] = c;
index++;
} else {
node *ptr = head;
for (int x = 0; x < index; x++) {
int ch = (word[x] == '\'') ? 26 : tolower(word[x]) - 'a';
if (ptr->next[ch] == NULL) {
ptr->next[ch] = calloc(1, sizeof(node));
}
ptr = ptr->next[ch];
}
ptr->end = true;
index = 0;
}
}
return head;
}

Answer 2

The line:
node* ptr = new_node;
and
ptr->next[ch] = new_node;
are not calling the function, but assigning the address of the function to ptr. Call the function instead.
This problem could have been prevented if compiler warnings: -Wall and -Wextra were enabled.
There is no bounds checking done on the array word. Use the value LENGTH to check if the index is in bounds before using it.
It isn't clear what the if statement inside the for loop is doing. It appears that every time a newline is found the whole array word is added to the tree, but the index isn't reset so the same array is added multiple times. At some point index will point out of bounds causing undefined behavior. You should reset index after you use the array word.

Answer 3

You forgot to reset index to 0 at the beginning of the loop.
You should also use calloc(1, sizeof(node)) instead of malloc(sizeof(node)) to avoid leaving memory uninitialized. I suggest you use valgrind to help you track problems of this kind in your code.

Answer 4

You should filter punctuation\unsupported characters a bit more. Any character outside of [a-z|A-Z|\n|\\] will crash your program because of
int ch = (word[x] == '\'') ? 26 : tolower(word[x])-'a';
if (ptr->next[ch] == NULL){
Given that you open a file, there might be a space somewhere or some unexpected character. You need something like
if(c!='\n'){
int num = (c == '\'') ? 26 : tolower(c)-'a');
if(num >=0 && num < 27)
{
word[index]=c;
index++;
}
}