Segmentation Fault on -> and strcpy line

Hi people,
Im a newbie in here so please bare with my lack of C knowledge. I'm currently trying to read from a file and storing its information to an array of a structure. Obviously I'm getting an error (Segmentation fault). I know its the -> sign and the strcpy line but Im just clue less on how to fix it. The code is below.

Code:

 void input_students(student_type * students[], int * n, FILE* ifp1){
//declare variables here
        char last_name[26];
        //last_name = (char *) malloc( sizeof(char) );
        int std_no; // integer student number
        char  major[16]; //the major
        int num_of_courses; //the num of courses the person is taking
        char course_nums[8][7];
        int course_marks[8];
        *n=0;
        int i=0;
        int j;
        while (fscanf(ifp1, "%s", last_name) != EOF){
                students[j]= (student_type*)malloc(sizeof(student_type));
                
                strcpy(*(students[j]->last_name), last_name);

                fscanf(ifp1 , "%d %s %d", &students[j]->std_no, &students[j]->major,
                &students[j]->num_of_courses);

                        for(i=0; i < students[j]->num_of_courses; i++){
                            fscanf(ifp1, "%s", &students[j]->course_nums[i]);
                            fscanf(ifp1, "%d", &students[j]->course_marks[i]);


                } j++;

        }
   *n = j;
}

Any help would be great. Thank you.

How did you declare student_type?

Also, try writing all your structures and variables as true arrays (not pointers which need to be malloc'ed). Once you have it working, it's an easy change to replace an array with a pointer and a malloc (the rest of the code is unlikely to notice).

Here is my student_type

Code:

struct STUDENT{
        char * last_name[26];                    
        int std_no; // integer student number
        char * major[16]; //the students major
        int num_of_courses; //the number of courses
        char * course_nums[8][7]; //2d array holding 8 strings max, each up to 6 chars
        int * course_marks[8]; //integer array for the marks of each course
};

typedef struct STUDENT student_type;

As for writing it as true arrays, I'm not quite understanding that part.

Well for a start, you need to remove all those * from your structure.

I presume you have something like this in your main()
STUDENT students[100];

Y'know what - post the whole lot.

You dereference 'students[j]->last_name' right after allocation of 'students[j]'. It probably contains garbage, which shouldn't be dereferenced.

look at salme's post. he said the proper error in your code. u shouldn't deference the array in your case. and more over which gives u someother meaning. it should be something like this

Code:

struct STUDENT{
        char  last_name[26];                    
        int std_no; // integer student number
        char  major[16]; //the students major
        int num_of_courses; //the number of courses
        char course_nums[8][7]; //2d array holding 8 strings max, each up to 6 chars
        int  course_marks[8]; //integer array for the marks of each course
};

typedef struct STUDENT student_type;

and int the function

Code:

 strcpy(students[j]->last_name, last_name);

hope this helps u a bit

s.s.harish