corrupted stack???

Hi,
I'm having a little problem. When my program is terminating (in debug mode) MSVC++ 2008 gives me the following message: Run-Time Check Failure #2 - Stack around the variable 'originalExtension' was corrupted.
originalExtension is an array with 21 elements that holds a string (20 characters + null). I read a string from a file using the following line:
fgets(extension, 21, readfile);

What does this error mean? my program seems to run normally, and the error appears only at the return statement in main().

You are probably overwriting the stack someplace else...

--
Mats

valid indexes on originalExtension if it is declared to be 21 elements would be 0-20. by writing the null in the 21 element you are writing it off the end of the buffer (which explains the stack error).

fgets() reads a max of num-1 bytes, so in this case, it only reads up to 20 bytes.

but fgets() also adds an end of string char, so again, it's writing past the end of the array, by one char.

In Debug mode, Visual C++ puts 4 special chars before and after the memory you allocated (0xFD I think), and if it sees that those chars have changed, it knows you wrote past the end (or beginning) of your buffer. If you step through in debug mode and look at the memory address for your pointer you should see something like:

Code:

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FD FD FD FD 34 38 54 43 ... FD FD FD FD

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If you execute one line at a time and look at the memory after each step, you might see 1 or more of the FD's turn into something else. That would be your bug.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Adak

but fgets() also adds an end of string char, so again, it's writing past the end of the array, by one char.

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And?

fgets() only reads num-1 bytes.

num=21.

The array is 21 bytes.

Therefore, fgets() reads 20 bytes, places them in array positions 0-19, and then writes a null term char in index position 20.

So, tell me again - where's the overlay here?

indeed, my bad, I didn't even notice the fgets the first time I read it, I just assumed you were writing 20 elements and attempting to write a null at the 21.

the error is also quite evident, your problem exists somewhere other than the call to fgets.

Quote:

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Run-Time Check Failure #2 - Stack around the variable 'originalExtension' was corrupted.

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Quote:

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fgets(extension, 21, readfile);

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You should be writing
fgets( extension, sizeof extension, readfile );
and not using magic numbers for the size.

Another, slightly more advanced method would be to add a data breakpoint to &originalExtension + sizeof(originalExtension), so that when the memory beyond originalExtension is modified, it will break. Handy stuff.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cpjust

In Debug mode, Visual C++ puts 4 special chars before and after the memory you allocated (0xFD I think), and if it sees that those chars have changed, it knows you wrote past the end (or beginning) of your buffer. If you step through in debug mode and look at the memory address for your pointer you should see something like:

Code:

---

FD FD FD FD 34 38 54 43 ... FD FD FD FD

---

If you execute one line at a time and look at the memory after each step, you might see 1 or more of the FD's turn into something else. That would be your bug.

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This only applies to when using new, however. All stack variables are filled with 0xCD I believe, but no bytes before or after. That only applies to new.

EDIT: repeated post

EDIT: repeated post. sorry

I'm sorry. As sl34k said, the error is not here, even though he guessed it wrong. I was looking at the wrong *section* of the program. My error was in another function that extracted and saved the extension from a file name into originalExtension. It did not check whether we have exceeded the capacity of the array or not.

Thanks again, and sorry for the bothering you but I had been working on it for a while (I guess I was tired because I found the problem now in 5 min.).