Stack overflow in recursion

**Nom1fan** · 11-24-2010

Hi everyone!

I'm trying to write a function in c which will receive a logical sentence and return whether it is legal or not.

My fuction is recursive and at the first call it crashes with the message "Stack overflow" in visual studio.

here is a part of my code:

Code:

char* checkSent(char sent[])
{

	int wasBracket=0, brackets=0;
	
		if (sent=='\0')
		{
			if(brackets)
			{
				fail();
			}
			else return sent;
		}
		
		sent=checkSent(sent++);

I will appreciate any help or information you can offer me about how to solve this and why this is happening.

Thanks in advance,
Rangid.

**Bayint Naung** · 11-24-2010

sent=checkSent(sent++);

Perhaps send = checkSent(sent+1); ?

**Nom1fan** · 11-24-2010

Originally Posted by Bayint Naung

sent=checkSent(sent++);

Perhaps send = checkSent(sent+1); ?

Thanks for the response, but unfortunately that does not solve my problem.

I have changed the line

sent = checkSent(sent++);

to:

strcpy(sent, checkSent(sent++));

but still the overflow error persists.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

**laserlight** · 11-24-2010

If checkSent is supposed to "return whether it is legal or not", why does it return a pointer to char rather than an int that serves as a boolean value?

Note that this is wrong because you modify sent twice between consecutive sequence points, resulting in undefined behaviour:

Code:

sent=checkSent(sent++);

This is wrong because the order of evaluation of function arguments is implementation defined:

Code:

strcpy(sent, checkSent(sent++));

Actually, it is probably also logically wrong, but I find it hard to express this other than by asking: what in the world are you trying to do with that statement?

**Salem** · 11-24-2010

Yes, use +1 like was suggested.

sent++ passes the ORIGINAL value of sent to the recursive invocation.
In other words, you're doing nothing with the value being passed.

sent+1 on the other hand makes progress towards some target.

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