Rcpp doesn't seem to read a binary file properly - c++

Question

I am trying to read a binary file using fread() and Rcpp seems to be able to read the file, given ftell() returns the proper size. When I try to print the first byte, it either returns a ☐ or nothing at all. Then RStudio crashes. This code runs perfectly fine in VSCode, but not through Rcpp.
This is how I am trying to read the file.
inline void readFile(string filePath){
//read a file using the C fopen function and store to fileData
FILE* file = fopen(filePath.c_str(), "rb");
if (file == NULL){Rcpp::stop("Cannot open file");}
//find size and print it to console
fseek(file, 0, SEEK_END);
int sizeOfFile = ftell(file);
if (sizeOfFile < 1 || sizeOfFile == NULL){Rcpp::stop("Bad File size");}
Rcpp::Rcout << "File size: " << sizeOfFile << endl;
fileData = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char*)*sizeOfFile);
rewind(file);
fread(fileData, sizeOfFile, 1, file);
fclose(file);
arrayPointer = fileData;
end = fileData + sizeOfFile;
if(arrayPointer == NULL){Rcpp::stop("arrayPointer is null");}
Rcpp::Rcout << "ArrayPointer: " << *(uint8_t*)&arrayPointer[0] << endl; //crashes here
// Rcpp::Rcout << "File size: " << sizeOfFile << endl;
}
If I comment out where I print the first value in arrayPointer then program crashes in the next line after I call this function.
const_array_iterator(string filePath) {
//set up the iterator
readFile(filePath);
//read first 28 bytes of fileData put it into params -> metadata
uint32_t params[7]; //Crashes here too
memcpy(&params, arrayPointer, 28);
arrayPointer+=32; //first delimitor is 4 bytes
Rcpp::Rcout << "Copied params" << endl;
magicByteSize = params[0];
rowType = params[1];
nRows = params[2];
colType = params[3];
nCols = params[4];
valueWidth = params[5];
oldIndexType = params[6];
memcpy(&value, arrayPointer, valueWidth);
arrayPointer += valueWidth;
memcpy(&newIndexWidth, arrayPointer, 1);
arrayPointer++; //this should make it point to first index
}
My R code
library(Rcpp)
library(RcppClock)
library(RcppEigen)
sourceCpp("src\\playground.cpp") # The file the previous code blocks belong to
iteratorBenchmark(10, 10, 5.0)
This code is for use in a custom iterator, and I think it will work fine if these issues are fixed. I tried using an ifstream, but ran into similar issues. I have tried running this on linux as well as windows (WSL), but neither seem to work. I know the file is being read, as ftell() returns the correct amount of bytes. The data just seems to not be read properly from the file.