An array element changes its value for no reason

**Mohammad74** · 06-21-2022

Hello,
I'm using C to write a user defined macro for the Ansys Fluent software. In a part of this macro, I read data from text files and store them in arrays , Here's the code:

Code:

DEFINE_EXECUTE_ON_LOADING(data_import,libname)  /*macro definition*/
{
    FILE *fp ;
    size_t i, j, k ;                                                       /*Array indexes*/
    char *tok1, *tok2, row[1000] ;
    
    /*First file*/
    fp=fopen("RCT.csv","r");
    i = 0;
    while (1)                                           /*Loop to read each line of characters*/
    {
        fgets(row,50,fp);
        if (feof(fp))                                   /*Breaks the loop if ENDOFFILE=TRUE*/
        {
            break;
        }
        tok1=strtok(row,",");
        j=0;
        while (tok1 != NULL)                             /*Loop to read tokens of each line*/
        {
            blade_d[i][j] = strtod(tok1,NULL);
            tok1 = strtok(NULL,",");
            j++;
        }
        i++;
    }


    fclose(fp);


    Message("\n %f\n", blade_d[0][0]) ;     /*A command to display messages*/


    /*Second and third file*/
    fp=fopen("Data_C_l.txt","r");
    for (k = 0; k < 2; k++)
    {
        
        i=0;
        while (1)
        {
            fgets(row,1000,fp);
            if (feof(fp))
            {
                break;
            }
            tok2=strtok(row," ");
            j=0;
            while (tok2 != NULL)
            {
                airfoil_d[k][i][j] = strtod(tok2,NULL);
                tok2 = strtok(NULL," ");
                j++;
            }
            i++;  
        }


        fclose(fp);
        fp = fopen("Data_C_d.txt","r");
    }


    fclose(fp);


    Message("\n %f\n", blade_d[0][0]) ;
}

Now, the problem is that the first element of "blade_d" array changes value from 0.25 (the correct one) to 0.0 . And this happens somewhere between the two "Message" commands. Since I'm pretty new to C language, I'm quite confused about why this is happening.
Any help is much appreciated.

p.s. "blade_d" and "airfoil_d" arrays are defined as global variables above macro definition.

**laserlight** · 06-21-2022

The easy guess is that you're writing to airfoil_d out of bounds, and airfoil_d happens to be adjacent to blade_d in memory such that this results in overwriting elements of blade_d.

The general solution to this problem is to check that the array indices are valid before using them to access the arrays. Typically, this is done by comparing the index to the capacity (as in number of elements) of the given array.

**Salem** · 06-21-2022

Consider some refactoring of the code.

Code:

#define B_MAX_ROWS  10
#define B_MAX_COLS  10
#define F_MAX_ROWS  10
#define F_MAX_COLS  10

double blade_d[B_MAX_ROWS][B_MAX_COLS];
double airfoil_d[2][F_MAX_ROWS][F_MAX_COLS];

void read_blade(const char *filename) {
    fp=fopen(filename,"r");
    if(fp) {
        char row[1000];
        for(int r = 0 ;
            r < B_MAX_ROWS && fgets(row,sizeof(row),fp) != NULL ; 
            r++ ) {
            char *tok;
            for(int c = 0, tok1 = strtok(row,",") ; 
                c < B_MAX_COLS && tok != NULL ; 
                c++, tok = strtok(NULL,",") ) {
                    blade_d[r][c] = strtod(tok,NULL);
            }
        }
        fclose(fp);
    }
}

void read_airfoil(const char *filename, int set) {
    fp=fopen(filename,"r");
    if(fp) {
        char row[1000];
        for(int r = 0 ;
            r < F_MAX_ROWS && fgets(row,sizeof(row),fp) != NULL ; 
            r++ ) {
            char *tok;
            for(int c = 0, tok1 = strtok(row," ") ; 
                c < F_MAX_COLS && tok != NULL; 
                c++, tok = strtok(NULL," ") ) {
                    airfoil_d[set][r][c] = strtod(tok,NULL);
            }
        }
        fclose(fp);
    }
}

DEFINE_EXECUTE_ON_LOADING(data_import,libname)  /*macro definition*/
{
    /*First file*/
    read_blade("RCT.csv");

    Message("\n %f\n", blade_d[0][0]) ;     /*A command to display messages*/
 
    /*Second and third file*/
    read_airfoil("Data_C_l.txt",0);
    read_airfoil("Data_C_d.txt",1);

    Message("\n %f\n", blade_d[0][0]) ;
}

Points to note
1. fgets returns a result, which does away with the messyness of checking feof
2. You can have more than one variable in a for loop. This makes it easy to strtok your way through a string and keep track of how many values have been read.
3. When reading from a file, error check and range check everything.

**Mohammad74** · 06-21-2022

Thanks for your quick replies ,
After reading your suggestions, I managed to solve this problem by editing the condition of the while loops to include a condition to check for the array range.

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