Question

Possible Duplicate:
Segmentation Fault – C

#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
int main()
{
  char *p;

  printf("enter some thing:");
  gets(p);

  printf("you have typed:%s\n",p);
}

Why doesn’t this program work?
i can’t use pointer as a string.

Output is:

enter some thing:raihan
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

I get this error every time when I use a char pointer.
How can I solve this problem?
I am using code-blocks on Linux mint13 KDE.

Answer 1

You have not allocated memory. You just declared a pointer, p, but didn’t make it point at anything. That explains the segmentation fault. You will need to allocate memory for your buffer.

What’s more, gets does not allow you to specify how big the buffer is. So you are at risk of running over the end of the buffer. So use fgets instead.

int main(void)
{
    char buffer[1024];//allocates a buffer to receive the input
    printf("enter some thing: ");
    fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin);
    printf("you have typed: %s\n", buffer);
    return 0;
}

I also corrected your declaration of main and made sure that it returns a value.