Manipulating a global array in a recursive function - c

Question

I'm working through an algorithms MOOC and have a small program that takes an array A of ints in arbitrary order, counts the number of inversions (an inversion being the number of pairs (i,j) of array indices with i<j and A[i] > A[j]).
Below is the code I've written. I'm trying to tackle it using a "divide and conquer" approach where we recursively split the input array into two halves, sort each half individually while counting the inversions and then merge the two halves.
The trick is I need to keep track of the number of inversions and sort the arrays, so I pass the original array around the various recursive calls as an argument to the function and pass the count of inversions as a return value.
The code executes correctly through the first set of recursive calls that successively divide and sort [1,5,3], however when I get to the 3rd invocation of mergeAndCountSplitInv it crashes at the line:
sortedArrayLeft = realloc(sortedArrayLeft, sizeof(int)*(rightLen + leftLen));
with the error:
malloc: *** error for object 0x100103abc: pointer being realloc'd was not allocated
I can't see where I'm not using malloc correctly and I've combed through this checking to see I'm doing the pointer arithmetic correctly and can't spot any errors, but clearly error(s) exist.
Any help is appreciated.
// main.c
// inversionInC
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>
// function to help with debugging array/pointer arithmetic
void logArrayLenAndContents (char *arrayName, int arrayToPrint[], int arrayLen){
printf("%s\n", arrayName);
printf("len:%d\n", arrayLen);
for (int idx = 0; idx < arrayLen; idx++) {
printf("array[%d]: %d\n", idx, arrayToPrint[idx]);
}
}
int mergeAndCountSplitInv(int sortedArrayLeft[], int leftLen, int sortedArrayRight[], int rightLen)
{
printf("Calling mergeAndCount with sortedArrayLeft:\n");
logArrayLenAndContents("left Array", sortedArrayLeft, leftLen);
printf("...and sortedArrayRight:\n");
logArrayLenAndContents("right Array", sortedArrayRight, rightLen);
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
int k = 0;
int v = 0; // num of split inversions
int* outArray;
outArray = malloc((leftLen + rightLen) * sizeof(int));
while (i < leftLen && j < rightLen) {
if (sortedArrayLeft[i] < sortedArrayRight[j]) {
outArray[k] = sortedArrayLeft[i];
i++;
} else{
outArray[k] = sortedArrayRight[j];
v += leftLen - i;
j++;
}
k++;
}
// if at the end of either array then append the remaining elements
if (i < leftLen) {
while (i < leftLen) {
outArray[k] = sortedArrayLeft[i];
i++;
k++;
}
}
if (j < rightLen) {
while (j < rightLen) {
outArray[k] = sortedArrayRight[j];
j++;
k++;
}
}
printf("Wrapping up mergeAndCount where outArray contains:\n");
logArrayLenAndContents("outArray", outArray, k);
sortedArrayLeft = realloc(sortedArrayLeft, sizeof(int)*(rightLen + leftLen));
return v;
}
int sortAndCount(int inArray[], int inLen){
printf("Calling sortAndCount with:\n");
logArrayLenAndContents("inArray", inArray, inLen);
if (inLen < 2) {
return 0;
}
int inArrayLenPart1 = ceil(inLen/2.0);
int inArrayLenPart2 = inLen - inArrayLenPart1;
int* rightArray = malloc(sizeof(int) * inArrayLenPart2);
rightArray = &inArray[inArrayLenPart1];
int x = sortAndCount(inArray, inArrayLenPart1);
printf("sortAndCount returned x = %d\n\n", x);
int y = sortAndCount(rightArray, inArrayLenPart2);
printf("sortAndCount returned y = %d\n\n", y);
int z = mergeAndCountSplitInv(inArray, inArrayLenPart1, rightArray, inArrayLenPart2);
printf("mergeAndCount returned z = %d\n", z);
return x+y+z;
}
int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{
static int* testArray;
testArray = malloc(5 * sizeof(int));
for (int i = 0; i<=4; i++) {
testArray[0] = 1;
testArray[1] = 5;
testArray[2] = 3;
testArray[3] = 2;
testArray[4] = 4;
}
int x = sortAndCount(testArray, 5);
printf("x = %d\n", x);
return 0;
}

Answer 1

This happens because the value of sortedArrayLeft gets lost as soon as the function returns. The realocated value does not make it to the caller, so inArray of the sortAndCount may be pointing to freed memory if realloc needs to reallocate and copy.
In order to fix this, pass a pointer to the pointer, letting sortedArrayLeft to propagate back to inArray of sortAndCount:
int mergeAndCountSplitInv(int **sortedArrayLeft, int leftLen, int sortedArrayRight[], int rightLen) {
...
*sortedArrayLeft = realloc(*sortedArrayLeft, sizeof(int)*(rightLen + leftLen));
return v;
}
...
int sortAndCount(int **inArray, int inLen) {
...
int z = mergeAndCountSplitInv(inArray, inArrayLenPart1, rightArray, inArrayLenPart2);
}
...
int x = sortAndCount(&testArray, 5);