Question

I am currently writing a program to implement an arraylist (or dynamic array) in C. Hmm… I think I have 70 – 80% done with it, however, I found a serious problem with my code when testing them on a couple of machines.

Briefly, I inserted a group of strings( char* ) into my arraylist, and tried to get and display them after couples of operations. However, this is what I got:

CHECK: 1
CHECK: 2
CHECK: ܗ¿èۗ¿
CHECK: EàEàHAÿE؉Ⱥ
CHECK: 5
CHECK: 6

Unfortunately, I still cannot figure out where the problem is in my codes, even though I have reviewed my codes twice.

arraylist.h

#ifndef _ARRAYLIST_H
#define _ARRAYLIST_H

#include <stdio.h>

typedef char* value_type;

struct arraylist {
  int size;
  value_type* data;
};

extern void arraylist_initial(struct arraylist *list);
extern int arraylist_get_size(const struct arraylist list);
extern value_type* arraylist_get_data_collection(const struct arraylist list);
extern void arraylist_set_data_collection(struct arraylist *list, value_type* data);
extern void arraylist_add(struct arraylist *list, value_type value);
extern value_type arraylist_get(const struct arraylist list, int index);
extern int arraylist_indexof(const struct arraylist list, value_type value);

#endif

arraylist.c

#include "arraylist.h"

void arraylist_initial(struct arraylist *list) {
  list->size = 0;
  list->data = NULL;
}

int arraylist_get_size(const struct arraylist list) {
  return list.size;
}

value_type* arraylist_get_data_collection(const struct arraylist list) {
  return list.data;
}

void arraylist_set_data_collection(struct arraylist *list, value_type* data) {
  list->data = data;
}

void arraylist_add(struct arraylist *list, value_type value) {
  int size = arraylist_get_size(*list);
  value_type new_data[size + 1];

  int index = 0;
  for(; index != size; ++index) {
    new_data[index] = arraylist_get(*list, index);
  }
  new_data[index] = value;

  arraylist_set_data_collection(list, new_data);

  ++list->size;
}

value_type arraylist_get(const struct arraylist list, int index) {
  if(index < arraylist_get_size(list)) {
    return list.data[index];
  }
  else {
    return NULL;
  }
}

int arraylist_indexof(const struct arraylist list, value_type value) {
  int index = 0;
  for(; index != arraylist_get_size(list); ++index) {
    if(strcmp(list.data[index], value) == 0) {
      return index;
    }
  }

  return -1;
}

int main(void){
  struct arraylist list;

  arraylist_initial(&list);

  arraylist_add(&list, "1");
  arraylist_add(&list, "2");
  arraylist_add(&list, "3");
  arraylist_add(&list, "4");
  arraylist_add(&list, "5");
  arraylist_add(&list, "6");

  int index = 0;
  for(; index != 6; ++index) {
    printf("CHECK: %s\n", arraylist_get(list, index));
  }

  return 0;
}

Answer 1

As others have noted, the problem is in the arraylist_add() function, which needs to dynamically allocate memory. This problem is actually perfectly suited for realloc(), which will expand the dynamically allocated array (meaning you don’t have to do the copying loop):

void arraylist_add(struct arraylist *list, value_type value) {
  int size = arraylist_get_size(*list);
  value_type *new_data;

  new_data = realloc(list->data, (size + 1) * sizeof new_data[0]);

  if (new_data)
  {
      new_data[size] = value;
      arraylist_set_data_collection(list, new_data);
      ++list->size;
  }
}

This will even work for the first allocation, since realloc() works like malloc() if you pass it a NULL.

PS:

To make the implementation more efficient, you shouldn’t expand the array by one entry each time – instead, keep track of the number of allocated blocks separately from the number of entries.