Question

Using the DevC++ debugger (still new to it), I’m pretty sure I’ve isolated a segfault scenario, but I’ve got no idea why it’s happening.

void LinkedList::Add(const char *Word){
    ListNode *newNode = new ListNode;
    strcpy(newNode->Word, Word);
    newNode->Next = NULL;
    ...
}

A segfault occurs at the “newNode->Next = NULL;”. However if I remove the strcpy above it, the segfault does not occur (but it means my newNode->Word is empty)

EDIT: sorry guys, here is the ListNode:

struct ListNode
{
    char *Word;
    LNodePtr Next;
};

Answer 1

You have not allocated any memory for Word pointer in the ListNode structure. Without this, it is pointing to some random location and whenever you are trying to write to that location (using strcpy) you will get an access violation. The simplest way to solve this is to use the std::string class and get rid of all manual memory management.

If you really want to use char*, then write a constructor for ListNode which takes const char* parameter (remember to declare it as explicit though) and use the strlen to find the length of the input string. Then allocate len + 1 (extra one char for the NULL terminator) characters and store the address in Word pointer. After that you can do strncpy.