Thread: Bad address when using stat() and perror()

Hello!

Im a fresh C programmer, and have a issue with this code:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <errno.h>

int returnValue;
uid_t uid;

main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{	
	struct stat *filstat;
	
	returnValue = fstat( open(argv[1], O_RDWR ), filstat );
	
	if(returnValue != 0) {
		perror("Error");
		exit(1);
	}
	
	uid = filstat->st_uid;
	
	
	exit(0);
	
}

Like this, the code works. BUT, if I move line 9, uid_t uid; to say line 14, just before returnValue =... it doesnt work! The error I recieve is:
Error: Bad address

We and two buddies have been fickling with this issue for two hours now, not understanding why it wont work.

Do you have any ideas?

Also, this code works on OSX Tiger 10.4.9 (gcc 4.0.1), but not on Fedora 6 (gcc 4.1.2), which gets a Segmentation Fault.

> struct stat *filstat;
> returnValue = fstat( open(argv[1], O_RDWR ), filstat );
It's not enough just to declare a variable of the right type just to make the compiler shut up, you have to understand what is really going on. fstat() fills in information into a buffer you supply.

Code:

struct stat filstat;
returnValue = fstat( open(argv[1], O_RDWR ), &filstat );
uid = filstat.st_uid;

You're still passing a pointer to fstat(), but it really is pointing to some of your memory.


You really should separate the open() call, assign the result to another variable, and check it before calling fstat()