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Take the following code :
int *p = malloc(2 * sizeof *p);
p[0] = 10; //Using the two spaces I
p[1] = 20; //allocated with malloc before.
p[2] = 30; //Using another space that I didn't allocate for.
printf("%d", *(p+1)); //Correctly prints 20
printf("%d", *(p+2)); //Also, correctly prints 30
//although I didn't allocate space for it
With the line malloc(2 * sizeof *p) I am allocating space for two integers, right ? But if I add an int to the third position, I still gets allocated correctly and retrievable.
So my question is, why do you specify a size when you use malloc ?
Simple logic: If you do not park in a legal parking space, nothing might happen but occasionally your car might get towed and you might get stuck with a huge fine. And, sometimes, as you try to find your way to the pound where your car was towed, you might get run over by a truck.
malloc gives you as many legal parking spots as you asked. You can try to park elsewhere, it might seem to work, but sometimes it won't.
For questions such as this, the Memory Allocation section of the C FAQ is a useful reference to consult. See 7.3b.
On a related (humorous) note, see also a list of bloopers by ART.
C kindly let you shoot yourself in the head. You have just used random memory on the heap. With unforeseeable consequences.
Disclaimer: My last real C programing was done some 15 years ago.
Let me give you an analogy to why this "works".
Let's assume you need to draw a drawing, so you retrieve a piece of paper, lay it flat on your table, and start drawing.
Unfortunately, the paper isn't big enough, but you, not caring, or not noticing, just continue to draw your drawing.
When done, you take a step back, and look at your drawing, and it looks good, exactly as you meant it to be, and exactly the way you drew it.
Until someone comes along and picks up their piece of paper that they left on the table before you got to it.
Now there's a piece of the drawing missing. The piece you drew on that other person's paper.
Additionally, that person now has pieces of your drawing on his paper, probably messing with whatever he wanted to have on the paper instead.
So while your memory usage might appear to work, it only does so because your program finishes. Leave such a bug in a program that runs for a while and I can guarantee you that you get odd results, crashes and whatnot.
C is built like a chainsaw on steroids. There's almost nothing you cannot do. This also means that you need to know what you're doing, otherwise you'll saw right through the tree and into your foot before you know it.
You got (un)lucky. Accessing p[3] is undefined, since you haven't allocated that memory for yourself. Reading/writing off the end of an array is one of the ways that C programs can crash in mysterious ways.
For example, this might change some value in some other variable that was allocated via malloc. That means it might crash later, and it'll be very hard to find the piece of (unrelated) code that overwrote your data.
Worse yet, you might overwrite some other data and might not notice. Imagine this accidentally overwrites the amount of money you owe someone ;-)
In fact, malloc is not allocating enough space for your third integer, but you got "lucky" and your program didn't crash. You can only be sure that malloc has allocated exactly what you asked for, no more. In other words, your program wrote to a piece of memory that was not allocated to it.
So malloc needs to know the size of the memory that you need because it doesn't know what you will end up doing with the memory, how many objects you plan on writing to the memory, etc...
This all goes back to C letting you shoot yourself in the foot. Just because you can do this, doesn't mean you should. The value at p+3 is definitely not guaranteed to be what you put there unless you specifically allocated it using malloc.
Try this:
int main ( int argc, char *argv[] ) {
int *p = malloc(2 * sizeof *p);
int *q = malloc(sizeof *q);
*q = 100;
p[0] = 10; p[1] = 20; p[2] = 30; p[3] = 40;
p[4] = 50; p[5] = 60; p[6] = 70;
printf("%d\n", *q);
return 0;
}
On my machine, it prints:
50
This is because you overwrote the memory allocated for p, and stomped on q.
Note that malloc may not put p and q in contiguous memory because of alignment restrictions.
Memory is represented as an enumerable contiguous line of slots that numbers can be stored in. The malloc function uses some of these slots for its own tracking info, as well as sometimes returning slots larger than what you need, so that when you return them later it isn't stuck with an unusably small chunk of memory. Your third int is either landing on mallocs own data, on empty space leftover in the returned chunk, or in the area of pending memory that malloc has requested from the OS but not otherwise parcelled out to you yet.
Depending on the platform, p[500] would probably "work" too.
When using malloc(), you are accepting a contract with the runtime library in which you agree to ask for as much memory as you are planning to use, and it agrees to give it to you. It is the kind of all-verbal, handshake agreement between friends, that so often gets people in trouble. When you access an address outside the range of your allocation, you are violating your promise.
At that point, you have requested what the standard calls "Undefined Behavior" and the compiler and library are allowed to do anything at all in response. Even appearing to work "correctly" is allowed.
It is very unfortunate that it does so often work correctly, because this mistake can be difficult to write test cases to catch. The best approaches to testing for it involve either replacing malloc() with an implementation that keeps track of block size limits and aggressively tests the heap for its health at every opportunity, or to use a tool like valgrind to watch the behavior of the program from "outside" and discover the misuse of buffer memory. Ideally, such misuse would fail early and fail loudly.
One reason why using elements close to the original allocation often succeeds is that the allocator often gives out blocks that are related to convenient multiples of the alignment guarantee, and that often results in some "spare" bytes at the end of one allocation before the start of the next. However the allocator often store critical information that it needs to manage the heap itself near those bytes, so overstepping the allocation can result in destruction of the data that malloc() itself needs to successfully make a second allocation.
Edit: The OP fixed the side issue with *(p+2) confounded against p[1] so I've edited my answer to drop that point.
You are asking for space for two integers. p[3] assumes that you have space for 4 integers!
===================
You need to tell malloc how much you need because it can't guess how much memory you need.
malloc can do whatever it wants as long as it returns at least the amount of memory you ask for.
It's like asking for a seat in a restaurant. You might be given a bigger table than you need. Or you might be given a seat at a table with other people. Or you might be given a table with one seat. Malloc is free to do anything it wants as long as you get your single seat.
As part of the "contract" for the use of malloc, you are required to never reference memory beyond what you have asked for because you are only guaranteed to get the amount you asked for.
Because malloc() allocates in BYTES. So, if you want to allocate (for example) 2 integers you must specify the size in bytes of 2 integers. The size of an integer can be found by using sizeof(int) and so the size in bytes of 2 integers is 2 * sizeof(int). Put this all together and you get:
int * p = malloc(2 * sizeof(int));
Note: given that the above only allocates space for TWO integers you are being very naughty in assigning a 3rd. You're lucky it doesn't crash. :)
Because malloc is allocating space on the heap which is part of the memory used by your program which is dynamically allocated. The underlying OS then gives your program the requested amount (or not if you end up with some error which implies you always should check return of malloc for error condition ) of virtual memory which it maps to physical memory (ie. the chips) using some clever magic involving complex things like paging we don't want to delve into unless we are writing an OS.
When you use * (p+3), you're addressing out of bounds even with using 2*sizeof(* p), hence you're accessing an invalid memory block, perfect for seg faults.
You specify the size b/c otherwise, the function doesn't know how big of a block out of the heap memory to allocate to your program for that pointer.
The reason for the size given to malloc() is for the memory manager to keep track of how much space has been given out to each process on your system. These tables help the system to know who allocated how much space, and what addresses are free()able.
Second, c allows you to write to any part of ram at any time. Kernel's may prevent you from writing to certain sections, causing protection faults, but there is nothing preventing the programmer from attempting.
Third, in all likelyhood, malloc()ing the first time probably doesn't simply allocate 8 bytes to your process. This is implementation dependent, but it is more likely for the memory manager to allocate a full page for your use just because it is easier to allocate page size chunks....then subsequent malloc()'s would further divide the previously malloc()ed page.
As everyone has said, you're writing to memory that isn't actually allocated, meaning that something could happen to overwrite your data. To demonstrate the problem, you could try something like this:
int *p = malloc(2 * sizeof(int));
p[0] = 10; p[1] = 20; p[2] = 30;
int *q = malloc(2 * sizeof(int));
q[0] = 0; // This may or may not get written to p[2], overwriting your 30.
printf("%d", p[0]); // Correctly prints 10
printf("%d", p[1]); // Correctly prints 20
printf("%d", p[2]); // May print 30, or 0, or possibly something else entirely.
There's no way to guarantee your program will allocate space for q at p[2]. It may in fact choose a completely different location. But for a simple program like this, it seems likely, and if it does allocate q at the location where p[2] would be, it will clearly demonstrate the out-of-range error.
Do :
int *p = malloc(2 * sizeof(*p)); // wrong (if type is something greater than a machine word)
[type] *p = malloc(2 * sizeof([type])); // right.
I don't understand how dynamically allocated strings in C work. Below, I have an example where I think I have created a pointer to a string and allocated it 0 memory, but I'm still able to give it characters. I'm clearly doing something wrong, but what?
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *str = malloc(0);
int i;
str[i++] = 'a';
str[i++] = 'b';
str[i++] = '\0';
printf("%s\n", str);
return 0;
}
What you're doing is undefined behavior. It might appear to work now, but is not required to work, and may break if anything changes.
malloc normally returns a block of memory of the given size that you can use. In your case, it just so happens that there's valid memory outside of that block that you're touching. That memory is not supposed to be touched; malloc might use that memory for internal housekeeping, it might give that memory as the result of some malloc call, or something else entirely. Whatever it is, it isn't yours, and touching it produces undefined behavior.
Section 7.20.3 of the current C standard states in part:
"If the size of the space requested is zero, the behavior is
implementation defined: either a null pointer is returned, or the
behavior is as if the size were some nonzero value, except that the
returned pointer shall not be used to access an object."
This will be implementation defined. Either it could send a NULL pointer or as mentioned something that cannot be referenced
Your are overwriting non-allocated memory. This might looks like working. But you are in trouble when you call free where the heap function tries to gives the memory block back.
Each malloc() returned chunk of memory has a header and a trailer. These structures hold at least the size of the allocated memory. Sometimes yout have additional guards. You are overwriting this heap internal structures. That's the reason why free() will complain or crash.
So you have an undefined behavior.
By doing malloc(0) you are creating a NULL pointer or a unique pointer that can be passed to free. Nothing wrong with that line. The problem lies when you perform pointer arithmetic and assign values to memory you have not allocated. Hence:
str[i++] = 'a'; // Invalid (undefined).
str[i++] = 'b'; // Invalid (undefined).
str[i++] = '\0'; // Invalid (undefined).
printf("%s\n", str); // Valid, (undefined).
It's always good to do two things:
Do not malloc 0 bytes.
Check to ensure the block of memory you malloced is valid.
... to check to see if a block of memory requested from malloc is valid, do the following:
if ( str == NULL ) exit( EXIT_FAILURE );
... after your call to malloc.
Your malloc(0) is wrong. As other people have pointed out that may or may not end up allocating a bit of memory, but regardless of what malloc actually does with 0 you should in this trivial example allocate at least 3*sizeof(char) bytes of memory.
So here we have a right nuisance. Say you allocated 20 bytes for your string, and then filled it with 19 characters and a null, thus filling the memory. So far so good. However, consider the case where you then want to add more characters to the string; you can't just out them in place because you had allocated only 20 bytes and you had already used them. All you can do is allocate a whole new buffer (say, 40 bytes), copy the original 19 characters into it, then add the new characters on the end and then free the original 20 bytes. Sounds inefficient doesn't it. And it is inefficient, it's a whole lot of work to allocate memory, and sounds like an specially large amount of work compared to other languages (eg C++) where you just concatenate strings with nothing more than str1 + str2.
Except that underneath the hood those languages are having to do exactly the same thing of allocating more memory and copying existing data. If one cares about high performance C makes it clearer where you are spending time, whereas the likes of C++, Java, C# hide the costly operations from you behind convenient-to-use classes. Those classes can be quite clever (eg allocating more memory than strictly necessary just in case), but you do have to be on the ball if you're interested in extracting the very best performance from your hardware.
This sort of problem is what lies behind the difficulties that operations like Facebook and Twitter had in growing their services. Sooner or later those convenient but inefficient class methods add up to something unsustainable.
I have yet again a question about the workings of C. (ANSI-C compiled by VS2012)
I am refactoring a standalone program (.exe) into a .dll. This works fine so far but I stumble accross problems when it comes to logging. Let me explain:
The original program - while running - wrote a log-file and printed information to the screen. Since my dll is going to run on a webserver, accessed by many people simultaneously there is
no real chance to handle log-files properly (and clean up after them)
no console-window anyone would see
So my goal is to write everything that would be put in the log-file or on the screen into string-like variables (I know that there are no strings in C) which I then can later pass on requet to the caller (also a dll, but written in C#).
Since in C such a thing is not possible:
char z88rlog;
z88rlog="First log-entry\n";
z88rlog+="Second log-entry\n";
I have two possibilities:
char z88rlog[REALLY_HUGE];
dynamically allocating memory
In my mind the first way is to be ignored because:
The potential waste of memory is rather enormous
I still may need more memory than REALLY_HUGE, thus creating a buffer overflow
which leaves me with the second way. I have done some work on that and came up with two solutions, either of which doesn't work properly.
/* Solution 1 */
void logpr(char* tmpstr)
{
extern char *z88rlog;
if (z88rlog==NULL)
{
z88rlog=malloc(strlen(tmpstr)+1);
strcpy(z88rlog,tmpstr);
}
else
{
z88rlog=realloc(z88rlog,strlen(z88rlog)+strlen(tmpstr));
z88rlog=strcat(z88rlog,tmpstr);
}
}
In solution 1 (equal to solution 2 you will find) I pass my new log-entry through char tmpstr[255];. My "log-file" z88rlog is declared globally, so I need extern to access it. I then check if memory has been allocated for z88rlog. If no I allocate memory the size of my log-entry (+1 for my \0) and copy the contents of tmpstr into z88rlog. If yes I realloc memory for z88rlog in the size of what it has been + the length of tmpstr (+1). Then the two "string" are joined, using strcat. Using breakpoints an the direct-window I obtainded the following output:
z88rlog
0x00000000 <Schlechtes Ptr>
z88rlog
0x0059ef80 "start Z88R version 14OS"
z88rlog
0x0059ef80 "start Z88R version 14OS
opening file Z88.DYNÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍýýýý««««««««þîþîþîþ"
It shows three consecutive calls of logpr (breakpoint before strcpy/strcat). The indistinguable gibberish at the end results from memory allocation. After that VS gives out an error message that something caused the debugger to set a breakpoint in realloc.c. Because this obviously doesn't work I concocted my wonderful solution 2:
/* Solution 2 */
void logpr(char* tmpstr)
{
extern char *z88rlog;
char *z88rlogtmp;
if (z88rlog==NULL)
{
z88rlog=malloc(strlen(tmpstr)+1);
strcpy(z88rlog,tmpstr);
}
else
{
z88rlogtmp=malloc(strlen(z88rlog)+strlen(tmpstr+1));
z88rlogtmp=strcat(z88rlog,tmpstr);
free(z88rlog);
z88rlog=malloc(strlen(z88rlogtmp)+1);
memcpy(z88rlog,z88rlogtmp,strlen(z88rlogtmp)+1);
free(z88rlogtmp);
}
}
Here my aim is to create a copy of my log-file, free the originals' memory create new memory for the original in the new size and copy the contents back. And don't forget to free the temporary copy since it's allocated via malloc. This crashes instantly when it reaches free, again telling me that the heap might be broken.
So lets comment free for the time being. This does work better - much to my relief - but while building the log-string suddenly not all characters from z88rlogtmp get copied. But everything still works kind of properly. Until suddenly I am told again that the heap might be broken and the debugger puts a breakpoint at the end of _heap_alloc (size_t size) in malloc.c size has - according to the debugger - the value of 1041.
So I have 2 (or 3) ways I want to achieve this "string-growing" but none works. Might the error giving me the size point me to the conclusion that the array has become to big? I hope I explained well what I want to do and someone can help me :-) Thanks in advance!
irony on Maybee I should just go and buy some new heap for the computer. Does it fit in RAM-slots? Can anyone recomend a good brand? irony off
This is one mistake in Solution 1:
z88rlog=realloc(z88rlog,strlen(z88rlog)+strlen(tmpstr));
as no space is allocated for the terminating null character. Note that you must store the result of realloc() to a temporary variable to avoid memory leak in the event of failure. To correct:
char* tmp = realloc(z88rlog, strlen(z88rlog) + strlen(tmpstr) + 1);
if (tmp)
{
z88rlog = tmp;
/* ... */
}
Mistakes in Solution 2:
z88rlogtmp=malloc(strlen(z88rlog)+strlen(tmpstr+1));
/*^^^^^^^^^*/
it is calulating one less than the length of tmpstr. To correct:
z88rlogtmp=malloc(strlen(z88rlog) + strlen(tmpstr) + 1);
Pointer reassignment resulting in undefined behaviour:
z88rlogtmp=strcat(z88rlog,tmpstr);
/* Now, 'z88rlogtmp' and 'z88rlog' point to the same memory. */
free(z88rlog);
/* 'z88rlogtmp' now points to deallocated memory. */
z88rlog=malloc(strlen(z88rlogtmp)+1);
/* This call ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ is undefined behaviour,
and from this point on anything can happen. */
memcpy(z88rlog,z88rlogtmp,strlen(z88rlogtmp)+1);
free(z88rlogtmp);
Additionally, if the code is executing within a Web Server it is almost certainly operating in a multi-threaded environment. As you have a global variable it will need synchronized access.
You seem to have many problems. To start with in your realloc call you don't allocate space for the terminating '\0' character. In your second solution you have strlen(tmpstr+1) which isn't correct. In your second solution you also use strcat to append to the existing buffer z88rlog, and if it's not big enough you overwrite unallocated memory, or over data allocated for something else. The first argument to strcat is the destination, and that is what is returned by the function as well so you loose the newly allocated memory too.
The first solution, with realloc, should work fine, if you just remember to allocate that extra character.
In solution 1, you would need to allocate space for terminating NULL character. Hence, the realloc should include one more space i.e.
z88rlog=realloc(z88rlog,strlen(z88rlog)+strlen(tmpstr) + 1);
In second solution, I am not sure of this z88rlogtmp=strcat(z88rlog,tmpstr); because z88rlog is the destination string. In case you wish to perform malloc only, then
z88rlogtmp=malloc(strlen(z88rlog)+1 // Allocate a temporary string
strcpy(z88rlogtmp,z88rlog); // Make a copy
free(z88rlog); // Free current string
z88rlog=malloc(strlen(z88rlogtmp)+ strlen(tmpstr) + 1)); //Re-allocate memory
strcpy(z88rlog, z88rlogtmp); // Copy first string
strcat(z88rlog, tmpStr); // Concatenate the next string
free(z88rlogtmp); // Free the Temporary string
I'm a bit confused about malloc() function.
if sizeof(char) is 1 byte and the malloc() function accepts N bytes in argument to allocate, then if I do:
char* buffer = malloc(3);
I allocate a buffer that can to store 3 characters, right?
char* s = malloc(3);
int i = 0;
while(i < 1024) { s[i] = 'b'; i++; }
s[i++] = '$';
s[i] = '\0';
printf("%s\n",s);
it works fine. and stores 1024 b's in s.
bbbb[...]$
why doesn't the code above cause a buffer overflow? Can anyone explain?
malloc(size) returns a location in memory where at least size bytes are available for you to use. You are likely to be able to write to the bytes immediately after s[size], but:
Those bytes may belong to other bits of your program, which will cause problems later in the execution.
Or, the bytes might be fine for you to write to - they might belong to a page your program uses, but aren't used for anything.
Or, they might belong to the structures that malloc() has used to keep track of what your program has used. Corrupting this is very bad!
Or, they might NOT belong to your program, which will result in an immediate segmentation fault. This is likely if you access say s[size + large_number]
It's difficult to say which one of these will happen because accessing outside the space you asked malloc() for will result in undefined behaviour.
In your example, you are overflowing the buffer, but not in a way that causes an immediate crash. Keep in mind that C does no bounds checking on array/pointer accesses.
Also, malloc() creates memory on the heap, but buffer overflows are usually about memory on the stack. If you want to create one as an exercise, use
char s[3];
instead. This will create an array of 3 chars on the stack. On most systems, there won't be any free space after the array, and so the space after s[2] will belong to the stack. Writing to that space can overwrite other variables on the stack, and ultimately cause segmentation faults by (say) overwriting the current stack frame's return pointer.
One other thing:
if sizeof(char) is 1 byte
sizeof(char) is actually defined by the standard to always be 1 byte. However, the size of that 1 byte might not be 8 bits on exotic systems. Of course, most of the time you don't have to worry about this.
It is Undefined Behavior(UB) to write beyond the bounds of allocated memory.
Any behavior is possible, no diagnostic is needed for UB & any behavior can be encountered.
An UB does not necessarily warrant a segmentation fault.
In a way, you did overflow your 3 character buffer. However, you did not overflow your program's address space (yet). So you are well out of the bounds of s*, but you are overwriting random other data in your program. Because your program owns this data, the program doesn't crash, but still does very very wrong things, and the future behaviour is undefined.
In practice what this is doing is corrupting the heap. The effects may not appear immediately (in fact, that's part of what makes such errors a PITA to debug). However, you may trash anything else that happens to be in the heap, or in that part of your program's address space for that matter. It's likely that you have also trashed malloc() internal data structures, and so it's likely that subsequent malloc() or free() calls may crash your program, leading many programmers to (falsely) believe they've found a bug in malloc().
You're overflowing the buffer. It depends what memory you're overflowing into to get an error msg.
Did you try executing your code in release mode or did you try to free up the memory you of s? It is an undefined behavior.
It's a bit of a language hack, and a bit dubious about it's use.
Why does the below C code using strcpy work just fine for me? I tried to make it fail in two ways:
1) I tried strcpy from a string literal into allocated memory that was too small to contain it. It copied the whole thing and didn't complain.
2) I tried strcpy from an array that was not NUL-terminated. The strcpy and the printf worked just fine. I had thought that strcpy copied chars until a NUL was found, but none was present and it still stopped.
Why don't these fail? Am I just getting "lucky" in some way, or am I misunderstanding how this function works? Is it specific to my platform (OS X Lion), or do most modern platforms work this way?
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
int main() {
char *src1 = "123456789";
char *dst1 = (char *)malloc( 5 );
char src2[5] = {'h','e','l','l','o'};
char *dst2 = (char *)malloc( 6 );
printf("src1: %s\n", src1);
strcpy(dst1, src1);
printf("dst1: %s\n", dst1);
strcpy(dst2, src2);
printf("src2: %s\n", src2);
dst2[5] = '\0';
printf("dst2: %s\n", dst2);
return 0;
}
The output from running this code is:
$ ./a.out
src1: 123456789
dst1: 123456789
src2: hello
dst2: hello
First, copying into an array that is too small:
C has no protection for going past array bounds, so if there is nothing sensitive at dst1[5..9], then you get lucky, and the copy goes into memory that you don't rightfully own, but it doesn't crash either. However, that memory is not safe, because it has not been allocated to your variable. Another variable may well have that memory allocated to it, and later overwrite the data you put in there, corrupting your string later on.
Secondly, copying from an array that is not null-terminated:
Even though we're usually taught that memory is full of arbitrary data, huge chunks of it are zero'd out. Even though you didn't put a null-terminator in src2, chances are good that src[5] happens to be \0 anyway. This makes the copy succeed. Note that this is NOT guaranteed, and could fail on any run, on any platform, at anytime. But you got lucky this time (and probably most of the time), and it worked.
Overwriting beyond the bounds of allocated memory causes Undefined Behavior.
So in a way yes you got lucky.
Undefined behavior means anything can happen and the behavior cannot be explained as the Standard, which defines the rules of the language, does not define any behavior.
EDIT:
On Second thoughts, I would say you are really Unlucky here that the program works fine and does not crash. It works now does not mean it will work always, In fact it is a bomb ticking to blow off.
As per Murphy's Law:
"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong"["and most likely at the most inconvenient possible moment"]
[ ]- Is my edit to the Law :)
Yes, you're quite simply getting lucky.
Typically, the heap is contiguous. This means that when you write past the malloced memory, you could be corrupting the following memory block, or some internal data structures that may exist between user memory blocks. Such corruption often manifests itself long after the offending code, which makes debugging this type of bugs difficult.
You're probably getting the NULs because the memory happens to be zero-filled (which isn't guaranteed).
As #Als said, this is undefined behaviour. This may crash, but it doesn't have to.
Many memory managers allocate in larger chunks of memory and then hand it to the "user" in smaller chunks, probably a mutliple of 4 or 8 bytes. So your write over the boundary probably simply writes into the extra bytes allocated. Or it overwrites one of the other variables you have.
You're not malloc-ing enough bytes there. The first string, "123456789" is 10 bytes (the null terminator is present), and {'h','e','l','l','o'} is 6 bytes (again, making room for the null terminator). You're currently clobbering the memory with that code, which leads to undefined (i.e. odd) behavior.