Memory error: what's wrong with strcpy(pattern,"\t")???

[cadbilbao]

Hello.

I've got a memory error when executing this piece of code compiled by Visual C++ (it does not happen in other compilers):

char *pattern;
strcpy(pattern,"\t"

There are no errors when compiling...

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Zyrenthian]

There is no space allocated for pattern

try

char pattern[16];
strcpy(pattern,"\t"

or dynamically allocate the memory with a malloc or new before you write to it.


Matt

 

[sflam]

The problem is: pattern is an uninitialized pointer. Because it is uninitialized, the value is random; because it is a pointer, it is thus randomly points to any memory location – including your program code area, data area, or system area. Program crashes is the least you would expect.

You have to initialize the pointer to a allocated memory:

    char *pattern = new char[2];  // you need one more space for the ‘\0’ character
    strcpy(pattern, "\t");    // char[0] is ‘\t’, char[1] is ‘\0’

or use a fixed size array like Matt suggested.

Shyan