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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T21:42:29+00:00

I have an array that’s declared as char buff[8]. That should only be 8

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I have an array that’s declared as char buff[8]. That should only be 8 bytes, but looking as the assembly and testing the code, I get a segmentation fault when I input something larger than 32 characters into that buff, whereas I would expect it to be for larger than 8 characters. Why is this?

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  1. Editorial Team

    What you’re saying is not a contradiction:

    • You have space for 8 characters.

    • You get an error when you input more than 32 characters.

    So what?

    The point is that nobody told you that you would be guaranteed to get an error if you input more than 8 characters. That’s simply undefined behaviour, and anything can (and will) happen.

    You absolutely mustn’t think that the absence of obvious misbehaviour is proof of the correctness of your code. Code correctness can only be verified by checking the code against the rules of the language (though some automated tools such as valgrind are an immense help).

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