Program Doesnt crash in debug mode, crashes normally

Hello everyone. I'm writing a program that reads in a text file with words, 1 on each line, and reads it into a binary search tree.

I am using Dev-C++. I'm not sure why i'm getting an error because whenever i run it in debug mode, it runs completely smoothly, but when I run it in normal mode my program crashes.

The question is, why am i getting crashes? And why would it work completely fine in debug mode!?

Without further ado, here's the code and the test file.

Code:

---


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

struct node
{
  char* data;
  struct node* left;
  struct node* right;
};

struct node* insert(struct node* root, char* value);

struct node* insert(struct node* root, char* value)
{
    struct node* newNode;
    if(root == NULL)
    {
        newNode = malloc(sizeof(struct node));
        newNode->data = malloc(sizeof(value));
        strcpy(newNode->data,value);
        newNode->left = NULL;
        newNode->right = NULL;
       
        return newNode;
    }
   
    if(strcmp(root->data,value) == 0)
        return root;

    if(strcmp(value,root->data) < 0)
    {
        root->left = insert(root->left, value);
        return root;
    }
    else
    {
        root->right = insert(root->right, value);
        return root;
    }
}


int main(void)
{
    char filename[256];
    char tempstr[100];
       
    printf("Whats the dictionary file you're using?\n");
    scanf("%s",filename);
    FILE *dictionaryfp;
    dictionaryfp = fopen(filename,"r");
    struct node* root = NULL;
   
    while (!feof(dictionaryfp))
    {
          fgets (tempstr , 100 , dictionaryfp);
          root = insert(root,tempstr);
    }
   
       
    printf("What do you want to search for?");
    char tempstring[256];
    scanf("%s",tempstring);
    printf("found?: %d",find(root,tempstring));
   
    system("PAUSE");
   
}

---

Text file:

Code:

---

nemy
gossamer
foreign
Shearer
flounder
wordy
pellet
Sagittarius
conformation
husky
intersect
Kaplan
birthright
ordinary
knight
cytoplasm
detestation
aureomycin
omen
pasteboard
Abidjan
aromatic
august
Katowice
executive
Jessie
digress
sequestration
satiric
abate
Semite
rigid
anthropomorphism
ongoing

---

Your program is flawed, but debug versions include more info, and different settings. Don't struggle with the why. It's not uncommon, and the program is indeed in need of fixing.

One thing, right off, is your int main() doesn't include a return 0 statement, which it should.

What errors or warnings do you see when you're compiling or running it in release mode? Are your warning levels turned all the way up?

I get 0 errors, 0 warnings when I compile. Good call on the return statement.

This is why i hate dev-c++, but i have to use it for my class. It has to compile with Dev C++. Do you see any other problems?

The program specifically cuts out after the third loop .

Is the read-in-loop syntactically correct?

feof is not a robust way to check for eof, but that's not your trouble, because you're not getting that far.

Let me run it through the old compiler one time, and see what happens.

Where does the program crash? It doesnt just "crash", it "crashes" at a specific point--use printf statements to manually debug the code to find out the last print statement executed before the crash, so somewhere up to there is where (one of) the bug(s) are.

I imagine you arent seeing various errors/warnings due to compiler "fixing" it in the background. You need to:
- "free" anything you "malloc", currently it has memory leaks
- Check return value of "malloc" (i.e. not NULL)
- Check the return value of "fopen", as your program assumes the file opens fine, when if it fails it returns NULL
- Your using some function called "find" that doesnt exist (compiler extension?)
- Check return value of "fgets", if it returns EOF or NULL your using it anyway
- Unlikely any issue for what your input is, but when "scanf"ing a string, you should make sure it doesnt buffer overflow--i.e. read up to the max characters that the destination buffer can store
- Use "strncpy" instead of "strcpy" to copy up to a certain number of characters, preventing buffer overflows

The size of value is questionable to me. I'm no expert with mallocing for struct members, but the sizeof(value) is always 2 bytes.

That doesn't seem like it's enough memory for a name like "gossamer", etc.

I just commented out the code lines that referred to find().

strncpy solved it,

Thank you for your wisdom, good sir

Another thing thats likely causing problems is

Code:

---

newNode->data = malloc(sizeof(value));

---

You should do this instead

Code:

---

newNode->data = malloc(strlen(value) + 1);

---

As "sizeof" is getting the size of the char*, not the length of the string that it points to. Instead, use "strlen" to allocate the length of that string, plus one for the terminating null character (which strlen doesnt include).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Adak

The size of value is questionable to me. I'm no expert with mallocing for struct members, but the sizeof(value) is always 2 bytes.

That doesn't seem like it's enough memory for a name like "gossamer", etc.

I just commented out the code lines that referred to find().

---

Hey Adak Bro i if you are talking about

Code:

---

newNode->data = malloc(sizeof(value));

---

then on 32 Bit linux OS and windows visual studio it will be 4 bytes as pointers are treated as ints and an int is always have 4 bytes of memory

And about structure sizeof as it is having 3 pointers then it will be 3 * 4 = 12

Mr. Adak are you talking about Turbo C i think on that int is having 2 bytes of mem