C Segmentation fault (core dumped) - c

Question

Hey i am starting to work on Huffman coding and I have a bit of a problem I getting this error
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
I understand it is caused by trying to reach memory you are not allow to but I can not realize what is the problem in my code, thank in advnace for the help!
src.txt - http://pastebin.com/kDf8nEhV
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int freq[256] = {0};
struct Node {
unsigned char m_ch;
int m_freq;
struct Node* m_ls, *m_rs;
struct Node* m_hls, *m_hrs;
};
struct Node* createNode(int freq, char ch);
void insertTree(struct Node** root, struct Node* n);
struct Node* getBinTree(FILE* fsrc);
void inorder(struct Node* root);
int main() {
FILE* fsrc;
struct Node* tree = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
fsrc = fopen("src.txt", "rb");
tree = getBinTree(fsrc);
inorder(tree);
return 1;
}
struct Node* createNode(int freq, char ch) {
struct Node* pNode = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
pNode->m_freq = freq;
pNode->m_ch = ch;
return pNode;
}
void insertTree(struct Node** root, struct Node* n) {
if (!(*root)) {
*root = n;
return;
}
if (n->m_freq < (*root)->m_freq) {
insertTree(&(*root)->m_ls, n);
} else {
insertTree(&(*root)->m_rs, n);
}
}
struct Node* getBinTree(FILE* fsrc) {
struct Node* temp = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
struct Node** root = (struct Node**)malloc(sizeof(struct Node*));
*root = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
int c, i;
while ((c = fgetc(fsrc)) != EOF) {
freq[c]++;
}
freq[255] = 1;
fclose(fsrc);
for (i = 0; i < 256; i++) {
if (freq[i] > 0) {
temp = createNode(freq[i], i);
insertTree(root, temp);
}
}
}
void inorder(struct Node* root) {
if (root != NULL) {
inorder(root->m_ls);
printf(" %d\n", root->m_freq);
inorder(root->m_rs);
}
return;
}

Answer 1

Your,
struct Node* getBinTree(FILE *fsrc)
is not returning anything.
You should enable compiler warnings, the compiler would have told you about that, the function is not returning a value, but you still assign it to tree in main().
But apart from that there is a serious problem with your code, a simple example
int main()
{
FILE *fsrc;
struct Node *tree = (struct Node*)malloc (sizeof(struct Node));
fsrc = fopen("src.txt","rb");
tree=getBinTree(fsrc);
inorder(tree);
return 1;
}
This single function has many problems,
You allocate new memory and point to it with tree, but you never use it because you overwrite the pointer here
tree = getBinTree(fsrc);
that causes a memory leak.
You don't check if the file was succesfuly opened, you must check
fsrc = fopen("src.txt", "rb");
if (fsrc == NULL)
return -1;
You don't need to cast malloc()
struct Node *tree = malloc(sizeof(*tree));
this is more robust, and easier to read.
You have to make sure that malloc() did not fail to allocate memory, when it does NULL is returned, so you need this when you do a malloc() that is actually required, for example in getBinTree()
struct Node *tree = malloc(sizeof(*tree));
if (tree == NULL)
return NULL;
i.e., copy malloc()'s behavior by returning NULL on failure.