Parsing and data overwriting issues in C using custom strtok - c

Question

I'm reading in a .csv file, which I then need to parse into tokens. I tried using strtok(), but that unfortunately cannot return null fields (which my data is fulll of). So I went with a home-made version of strtok that I found, strtok_single, which returns the correct values that I need.
The data is input into my array correctly; but there is something wrong because before the initilization loops finish, the data gets overwritten. I've tried print statements and analyzing the problem but I just can't figure out what's wrong. Any insight at all would be helpful.
Here is the homemade strtok function I'm using:
char* strtok_single(char* str, char const* delims) {
static char* src = NULL;
char* p, *ret = 0;
if (str != NULL)
src = str;
if (src == NULL)
return NULL;
if ((p = strpbrk(src, delims)) != NULL) {
*p = 0;
ret = src;
src = ++p;
}
return ret;
}
Here is my code:
int main() {
int numLines = 0;
int ch, i, j;
char tmp[1024];
char* field;
char line[1024];
FILE* fp = fopen("filename.csv", "r");
// count number of lines in file
while ((ch = fgetc(fp)) != EOF) {
if (ch == '\n')
numLines++;
}
fclose(fp);
// Allocate memory for each line in file
char*** activity = malloc(numLines * sizeof(char**));
for (i = 0; i < numLines; i++) {
activity[i] = malloc(42 * sizeof(char*));
for (j = 0; j < 42; j++) {
activity[i][j] = malloc(100 * sizeof(char));
}
}
// read activity file and initilize activity matrix
FILE* stream = fopen("filename.csv", "r");
i = 0;
while (fgets(line, 1024, stream)) {
j = 0;
int newlineLoc = strcspn(line, "\n");
line[newlineLoc] = ',';
strcpy(tmp, line);
field = strtok_single(tmp, ",");
while (field != NULL) {
for (j = 0; j < 42; j++) {
activity[i][j] = field;
field = strtok_single(NULL, ",");
// when I print activity[i][j] here, the values are correct
}
// when I print activity[i][j] here, the values are correct for the
// first iteration
// and then get overwritten by partial data from the next line
}
i++;
} // close while
fclose(stream);
// by the time I get to here my matrix is full of garbage
// some more code that prints the array and frees memory
} // close main

Answer 1

activity[i][j] = field;
When the loops finish, each activity[i][j] points to somewhere in tmp, which is overwritten in each loop. Instead, since you pre-allocate space in each activity[i][j], you should just copy the contents of the string to that:
strcpy(activity[i][j], field);
Being careful of buffer overflow (i.e. if field is more than 99 characters).
Also, the sizeof(char) is superfluous since it's always 1 by definition.

Answer 2

Your line "activity[i][j] = field;" is backwards - you want the pointer assigned to the malloc'd memory.