Creating array of strings works in source code doesn't work in executable - c

Question

I've got some code which generates an array of strings of different file names and then
passes them into a function to write some data to them. It adds a incrementing number to the starting filename which is supplied from an input argument.
The problem is that it works fine running from source in Visual Studio 2012 but when I compile it and run it as an .exe the program crashes.
The .exe doesn't appear to be passing the array of strings properly which is causing an error when it attempts to use the string
for opening a file etc.
Here is the isolated bit of code
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <Windows.h>
void processing_function(int num_output, char **outnames)
{
/* in Visual Studio this works fine and prints all
the names correctly. Running from .exe will crash */
for(int idx = 0; idx <num_output;idx++)
{
printf("outnames[%d] is %s\n",idx,outnames[idx]);
}
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
/*nframes comes from another function, outname comes from input arguement */
int num_output = ceil(((double)*nframes / 1100));
int outname_len = strlen(outname)+1;
char *out_right;
out_right = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char)*outname_len);
/*Split string to append numbers before file extension */
strcpy(out_right,outname);
strrev(out_right);
strtok(out_right,".");
strcat(out_right,".");
strrev(out_right);
int out_right_len = strlen(out_right);
strtok(outname,".");
strcat(outname,"-");
int out_origlen = strlen(outname);
int num_len = 1;
char **outnames;
char *num;
char *outname_tmp;
outnames = (char**) malloc(sizeof(char)*(num_output));
int out_len;
double dbl_idx;
int *numfs = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int)*num_output);
for(int idx = 1;idx <num_output+1;idx++)
{
/*convert output number to string and stitch complete name back together and place into array */
num_len = ceil(log10((double)idx+0.1));
num = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char)*(num_len+1));
outname_tmp = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char)*(out_origlen+num_len+out_right_len+1));
strcpy(outname_tmp,outname);
sprintf(num,"%d",idx);
strcat(outname_tmp,num);
free(num);
strcat(outname_tmp,out_right);
outnames[idx-1] = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char)*(out_origlen+num_len+out_right_len+1));
strcpy(outnames[idx-1],outname_tmp);
free(outname_tmp);
printf("%s\n",outnames[idx-1]);
}
free(out_right);
processing_function(num_ouput, outnames)
return(0);
}
EDIT: Changed num_input to num_output as they do have the same value.
Running from .exe will sometimes start printing some of the names and then crash, opening the
debugger gives an error within output.c, with an access reading violation. I tried putting this code at
the top of the processing_function but that gave further problems downstream (heap corruption), which makes me think that the
code is messing up the memory but I can't see whats wrong with it, nor why it would work in VS but not as a .exe.
I could try and dodge the issue by generating the next output name on the fly every time it requires one but I'd really rather know why this isn't working.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I am going to take a shot and say, you passed num_input to processing_function() with outnames, outnames was allocated with num_output for size, but num_input and num_output have different values at runtime. So that lets processing_function() access out of bounds.