corrupted stack?

Hi

I'm a complete C newbie. I do have some experience in Java, though. Anyway, I've been working on a small project in C (mostly for leaning purposes), and it compiles, but when I run it I get an error message. I've been reading around online, but haven't found anything that works in fixing it. Here's the error message and the offending code:

Code:

C:\c_programs\test2>up2.exe
      7 [main] up2 1280 _cygtls::handle_exceptions: Exception: STATUS_ACCESS_VIO
LATION
    831 [main] up2 1280 open_stackdumpfile: Dumping stack trace to up2.exe.stack
dump
 876694 [main] up2 1280 _cygtls::handle_exceptions: Exception: STATUS_ACCESS_VIO
LATION
 898744 [main] up2 1280 _cygtls::handle_exceptions: Error while dumping state (p
robably corrupted stack)

Code:

//up2.c
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>


struct Data{
	int currentAmount;
	int isactive;
};


struct Data* data;
static char buffer[5000];


void updateCurrentAmount(void){
	static char lookFor[] = "amount=";  //this string immediatly preceads the amount
	char* startOfExpression = strstr(buffer, lookFor);
	
	if (startOfExpression == NULL){  //we have problems
		printf("ERROR - Error parsing charpane.php");
		exit(-1);
	}	
	
	char* startOfNumber = startOfExpression + strlen(lookFor);
	data->currentAmount = atoi(strncpy("", startOfNumber, 5));
}



//tests updateCurrentLevel function
int main(){
	strcpy(buffer, "name=fred amount=12345 isactive=1");
	data = (struct Data*) malloc(sizeof(struct Data));
	
	
	updateCurrentAmount();
	
	printf("current level = %i", data->currentAmount);
	return 0;
}

Any help you can give me would be much appriciated. Thank you.

Code:

strncpy("", startOfNumber, 5)

"" should instead be a buffer large enough to hold startOfNumber (5).

Thanks for the help. Such a simple little mistake but I never would have found it.

Thanks again.

> char* startOfNumber = startOfExpression + strlen(lookFor);
Standard C doesn't allow mixed declarations and statements.
You must be using
- C99 (the new C standard)
- Some compiler speciifc extension
- C++

> data = (struct Data*) malloc(sizeof(struct Data));
You don't need to cast the result of malloc in C, you already included stdlib.h which is all you need.
If you still need the cast, it probably means you're using a C++ compiler to compile your C code.