Thread: convert element of char* to a character

I've got a variable file of type char*, and am trying to iterate through a for loop by doing the following:

Code:

int idx;
for (idx=0; file[idx] != '\0'; idx++) {
  //do some stuff
}

The file[idx] part of the stop condition results in the error Segmentation fault (core dumped). I believe that I am not quite understanding something related to indexing and character pointers. Could someone shed some light on this for me? Thanks!

I notice that couple of test lines preceeding this code:

Code:

printf("%c\n", file[0]);
printf("%c\n", file[0]);

do seem to be giving expected results. How can i translate file[idx] into a character that i can use in my stop condition?

I think you have not allocaetd the memory for the character pointer variable file.If you allocated memory for that variable you will not get segmentation fault.

Use this,

Code:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<malloc.h>
#include<string.h>
main()
{
 char *file;
 file=malloc(100);
 strcpy(file,"Hello");
int idx=0;
for (idx=0; file[idx] != '\0'; idx++) {
        printf("%c",file[idx]);
}
}

Thanks

All of this is going on within a function and unfortunately file is a variable for a function parameter. How could I resolve it in this case? Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that.

Post your entire code . It will helpful for others to understand the problem.

whoa! The problem was that my function char* parameter variable (which in this particular use case, takes a file passed by the user) was not null terminated. More surprising is that the string was followed by a bunch of private user and system environment info.