Question

Sorry I can’t be specific with code, but the problems I am seeing are anomalous. Character string values seem to be getting changed depending on other, unrelated code. For example, the value of the argument that is passed around below will change merely depending on if I comment out one or two of the fprintf() calls! By the last fprintf() the value is typically completely empty (and no, I have checked to make sure I am not modifying the argument directly… all I have to do is comment out a fprintf() or add another fprintf() and the value of the string will change at certain points!):

static process_args(char *arg) {
    /* debug */
    fprintf(stderr, "Function arg is %s\n", arg);

    ...do a bunch of stuff including call another function that uses alloc()...

    /* debug */
    fprintf(stderr, "Function arg is now %s\n", arg);    
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    char *my_arg;

    ... do a bunch of stuff ...

    /* just to show you it's nothing to do with the argv array */
    my_string = strdup(argv[1]);

    /* debug */
    fprintf(stderr, "Argument 1 is %s\n", my_string);

    process_args(my_string);
}

There’s more code all around, so I can’t ask for someone to debug my program — what I want to know is HOW can I debug why character strings like this are getting their memory changed or overwritten based on unrelated code. Is my memory limited? My stack too small? How do I tell? What else can I do to track down the issue? My program isn’t huge, it’s like a thousand lines of code give or take and a couple dynamically linked external libs, but nothing out of the ordinary.

HELP! TIA!

Answer 1

Simple:

1. Learn to use Valgrind, specifically memcheck
2. Learn to use GDB including break points and variable inspection
3. Practice makes perfect.

That should sort it. Make sure you compile any libraries with the -g option on GCC, which keeps debugging symbols so your debugging output makes more sense.