Question

I’m getting an error in valgrind and don’t know what is wrong.
The error is:
valgrind output:

==1112== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s)
==1112==    at 0x402BF0D: realloc (in /usr/lib/valgrind/vgpreload_memcheck-x86-linux.so)

And it states the problem occurs on line 226:

if(reallocate ==TRUE)
{
    char** temp_values = NULL;


    temp_values = (char**) realloc(theBoard->_values, theBoard->_size_r*sizeof(char*) );

    if(temp_values!=NULL)
    {
        theBoard->_values = temp_values;
    } else
    {
        reportError(MEM_OUT);
        return FALSE;
    }

    int i = 0;
    for (i=0; i<theBoard->_size_r; i++)
    {
        char* temp_values_c = NULL;
HERE( line 226)->   temp_values_c = realloc(theBoard->_values[i], theBoard->_size_c*sizeof(char) );

        if(temp_values_c != NULL)
        {
            theBoard->_values[i] = temp_values_c;
        } else
        {
            reportError(MEM_OUT);
            return FALSE;
        }
    }

    // initialize extra memory
    if(row_out_bound)
    {
        init(theBoard,prev_size_r,0);
    }

    if(col_out_bound)
    {
        init(theBoard,0, prev_size_c);
    }

}

Why is this happening and how can i fix it?

Answer 1

The problem is theBoard->_values[i] is not initialized since it comes straight from realloc (temp_values = ...).

EDIT

Can you elaborate please?

I thought you’d never ask. The function realloc returns a chunk of memory of the specified size, with no guarantees regarding its contents. So for all practical purposes you should assume anything realloc returns contains garbage. In your code you take that (potential) garbage and on line 226 you tell realloc:

Here’s this pointer that’s like totally valid and all. It’s NULL or I previously obtained it from malloc. Can you realloc it to this size? And that’s not true! The actual value contained by theBoard->_values[i] could be anything.

What you want is a loop that does theBoard->_values[i] = NULL, or maybe use malloc instead of realloc on line 226.