How to initialize a pointer appropriately to avoid segmentation fault in c++? - c++

Question

I have started learning c++ (coming from java background) and barely reached pointers and got stuck. When I debug this program it says, program received segmentation fault (SIGSEGV signal) at line
*previous = head;
in the following code.
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
struct Node
{
int data;
Node *link;
};
int main()
{
cout << "Starting main program \n";
Node head;
head.data = 0;
head.link = NULL;
cout << "After declaring head and initializing values \n";
//Declaring a pointer variable which points to an entity of type struct.
Node *previous;
*previous=head;
cout << "After declaring previous pointer \n";
bool done = false;
int i = 1;
cout << "First while loop\n";
while(!done)
{
cout << i << ": Iteration";
Node temp;
temp.data=i;
temp.link=NULL;
if(i > 2)
{
done = true;
continue;
}
*previous->link=temp;
++i;
*previous = temp;
}
done = false;
cout << "Declaring temp pointer before printing \n";
Node *temp;
*temp = head;
cout << "Second while loop\n";
while (!done)
{
cout << i << ": Iteration";
if(temp == NULL)
{
done = true;
continue;
}
cout << temp->data << "->";
*temp = *temp->link;
}
cout << "NULL";
}
Why is the pointer initialization incorrect ?

Answer 1

First problem:
Node *previous;
*previous=head;
First line declares that previous will hold the address of a Node. It is not initialized, so whatever value happens to be on the stack will be picked up as the bit pattern it holds.
Unfortunately, the 2nd line then dereferences the pointer (which points to garbage) and attempts to copy head into random memory (hence your crash).
In this case you probably want previous to point to head, which is taking head's address and assigning it:
Node* previous = &head; // initialize at the point of declaration
However, you must also be very wary of pointers to variables declared on the stack, because the addresses will soon become invalid when the function returns or the scope exits.
(Usually data structures with pointers are using values allocated on the heap, so the objects outlive the function that declares them.)
Which brings us to the second problem:
while(!done)
{
cout << i << ": Iteration";
Node temp;
Already there's a problem. temp is declared inside the loop on the stack. Each loop iteration, the variable will automatically be destroyed. Therefore it cannot participate in your linked list without corrupting it.
You want your list nodes to be created with new, and when you update previous's next pointer, you want to assign an address TO it, not copy an object THROUGH it.
Something like this:
while(!done)
{
cout << i << ": Iteration";
Node * temp = new Node();
temp->data = i;
temp->link = nullptr; // better than NULL
if(i > 2)
{
break;
}
previous->link = temp;
++i;
previous = temp;
}
The head object should probably also be heap allocated. Of course, now you have to deal with cleaning up the memory by calling delete on all the nodes.

Answer 2

There were some bugs in the code but major ones were :-
you were not allocating memory for the new nodes that you were adding during runtime
you were creating instances of structure but instead you were required to create an pointer pointing to the structure ( instances will be created during runtime ( using new operator )
I have added the comments to the code explaining what exactly are the changes that I have done.
Here is the fix :-
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
struct Node
{
int data;
Node *link;
};
int main()
{
cout << "Starting main program \n";
// Allocating memory for the new instance of Node and making "head" pointing to it
Node *head = new Node;
head->data = 0;
head->link = NULL;
cout << "After declaring head and initializing values \n";
//Declaring a pointer variable which points to an entity of type struct.
Node *previous;
// As head and previous both are pointers thus can be assigned as it is
previous = head;
cout << "After declaring previous pointer \n";
bool done = false;
int i = 1;
cout << "First while loop\n";
while(!done)
{
cout << i << ": Iteration";
// Allocating memory for the new instance of Node and making temp pointing to it
Node *temp = new Node;
// As temp is a pointer thus using member access ("- >") operator to access the members
temp->data=i;
temp->link=NULL;
if(i > 2)
{
done = true;
continue;
}
previous->link = temp;
++i;
previous = temp;
}
done = false;
cout << "Declaring temp pointer before printing \n";
Node *temp;
temp = head;
cout << "Second while loop\n";
while (!done)
{
cout << i << ": Iteration";
if(temp == NULL)
{
done = true;
continue;
}
cout << temp->data << "->";
temp = temp->link;
}
cout << "NULL";
}