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Asked: 2026-06-05T20:29:09+00:00

I am a new C programmer and the pointers + arrays are messing me

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I am a new C programmer and the pointers + arrays are messing me over a lot. I don’t get any errors and the code runs fine…until somewhere in the middle the code starts acting up because some element in an array is set to something other than I wanted it to be. I wanted to know if there is a program that visualizes the memory of the code after it has finished running?

E.g after I run:

#include<stdio.h>
int main(){
    int array[2] = {0,1};
    array[1] = 4;
    printf("%d\n",array[1]);
    }

It will show a block of memory where array has two elements with 0 and 4 .

Right now to avoid running into a problem where the array contains elements from previous action I clear the memory of that array by doing:

memset(tokenized,0,MAX_CHARS);

It seems to work, but I don’t know if its actually doing what I think it’s doing at the back end.

Edit:
I am using Valgrind now and I just want to know, how do I know what line the error is referring to?
For example I got this:

==24394== Source and destination overlap in strncpy(0x7ff000006, 0x7ff000006, 6)
==24394==    at 0x4C2C236: strncpy (in /usr/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-linux.so)
==24394==    by 0x400D8A: tokenize_quotes (in /home/zee/Documents/seng265/repos/assignment2/a.out)
==24394==    by 0x40184E: main (in /home/zee/Documents/seng265/repos/assignment2/a.out)
==24394== 
==24394== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s)
==24394==    at 0x4C2C007: strcpy (in /usr/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-amd64-linux.so)
==24394==    by 0x400E06: tokenize_quotes (in /home/zee/Documents/seng265/repos/assignment2/a.out)
==24394==    by 0x40184E: main (in /home/zee/Documents/seng265/repos/assignment2/a.out)
==24394==

But I don’t know what line the error is on? I know its something about strcpy
Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use Valgrind:

    Valgrind is a GPL’d system for debugging and profiling Linux programs.
    With Valgrind’s tool suite you can automatically detect many memory
    management and threading bugs, avoiding hours of frustrating
    bug-hunting, making your programs more stable. You can also perform
    detailed profiling to help speed up your programs.​

    ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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