fseek() changing an unrelated variable?

Hi all,
Sorry, I'm a bit new at this, but I'm trying to get a certain function to work on my Mac (using XCode on Leopard), and I've discovered some weird behaviour. I've atomized the issue down to this code:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
    char* string;
	FILE* filename;
	
	filename = fopen("sample.pdf", "rb");
	printf("Enter a string: ");
	scanf("%s", string);
	
	printf("Pass before fseek() = %i\n", strlen(string));
    fseek(filename,0,SEEK_END);
	printf("Pass after fseek() = %i\n", strlen(string));
	
	//printf("String is %i characters long", strlen(string));
    return 0;
}

I've been testing with Windows and Mac, but I really need to get this working on the Mac. What happens is, this program takes a string -- it's meant to be a password. However, after doing an fseek operation on a file, it gets very whacky. I'm testing length of the string, and depending on its original length, it either decrements by one, or goes to zero altogether. Here's some sample output:

Code:

Password: asdf
Pass before fseek() = 4
Pass after fseek() = 3

Code:

Password: dkdkd
Pass before fseek() = 5
Pass after fseek() = 0

It works fine in Windows. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Aaron.

I'm utterly surprised that IT "WORKS" at all. By all means, this code should crash.

The variable string is a pointer to char that hasn't been given a value, so when you do scanf() you are reading into a undefined memory location - you are just "lucky" enough that it doesn't crash immediately [actualy, if I make a mistake where I use an uninitialized pointer, and it does happen, I prefer it when it crashes immediately, rather than "sort of working but behaving strange", which is the situation you are in].

If you allocate some memory for your "string", you will most likely be able to use it correctly too.

--
Mats

In other words, storing data into a char* isn't going to work. You need to either use an array

Code:

char string[LENGTH];

or dynamically allocate memory for yourself.

Code:

char *string = malloc(length);
/* ... */
free(string);

Note that with this you have to put an upper limit on the number of characters the user can enter. (When calculating sizes, don't forget to take the NULL into account.) You can also resize the allocated memory as required, to allocate just the right amount of memory (or maybe a little more) for your string, but it's a little complicated and I'm not going to explain it right now. (Look into realloc() if you're interested.)

Pedantic note: your FILE* filename variable isn't really a "filename". I usually refer to FILE* pointers as "file pointers" (and UNIX-style int ones as "file descriptors"), while a char* filename like "text.txt" is a "filename".

Aha! Right you are. Thanks so much for your help, and your rapid replies!

Cheers,
Aaron.