Segmentation fault using structs in C

Question

I'm testing out what we recently learned in class about structs and pointers by writing a small C program. However, after running it i came across a segmentation fault (core dumped) error. Can someone help me figure out where exactly that's caused? Did i miss any dangling pointers or did i do something wrong using malloc()?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

const char *admin = "Administrator";
const char *mng = "Manager";
const char *prog = "Programmer";

struct employee {
    char *name;
    char title[20];
    char id[8];
    int yearsExp;
};

typedef struct employee emp_t;

emp_t *everyone[1];

emp_t *create_emp(const char *name,const char *title,const char *id,int yrxp) {
    emp_t *new;

    new = (emp_t *) malloc(sizeof(emp_t));
    new->name = (char*) malloc(strlen(name) + 1);
    strcpy(new->name,name);
    strcpy(new->title,title);
    strcpy(new->id,id);
    new->yearsExp = yrxp;
    return new;
}

void free_emp(emp_t *employee) {
    free(employee->name);
    free(employee);
}

int main() {
    int i;

    everyone[0] = create_emp("Mike Papamichail",prog,"A197482",3);
    everyone[1] = create_emp("Maria Mamalaki",mng,"Z104781",6);

    for(i = 0; i < 2;i++) {
        printf("%15s \t %15s \t %10s \t %4d\n",
        everyone[0]->name,everyone[0]->title,everyone[0]->id,everyone[0]->yearsExp);
        free_emp(everyone[i]);
        everyone[i] = NULL;
    }
    return 0;
}

Updated Code for clarity

    #include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

const char *admin = "Administrator";
const char *mng = "Manager";
const char *prog = "Programmer";

struct employee {
    char *name;
    char title[20];
    char id[8];
    int yearsExp;
};

typedef struct employee emp_t;

emp_t *create_emp(const char *name,const char *title,const char *id,int yrxp) {
    emp_t *new;

    new = (emp_t *) malloc(sizeof(emp_t));
    new->name = (char*) malloc(strlen(name) + 1);
    strcpy(new->name,name);
    strcpy(new->title,title);
    strcpy(new->id,id);
    new->yearsExp = yrxp;
    return new;
}

void free_emp(emp_t *employee) {
    free(employee->name);
    free(employee);
}

int main() {
    int i;
    emp_t *everyone[2];

    everyone[0] = create_emp("Mike Papamichail",prog,"A197482",3);
    everyone[1] = create_emp("Maria Mamalaki",mng,"Z104781",6);

    for(i = 0; i < 2;i++) {
        printf("%15s \t %15s \t %10s \t %4d\n",
        everyone[0]->name,everyone[0]->title,everyone[0]->id,everyone[0]->yearsExp);
        free_emp(everyone[i]);
        everyone[i] = NULL;
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

You are close on all points @tadman caught your biggest error in creating an array of 1 pointer with emp_t *everyone[1] (now deleted in your question).

The remainder of the issues with your code are more a number of small corrections or improvement comparatively speaking.

For starters, avoid using "magic-numbers" in your code (e.g. 20, 8, 2). If you need constants, #define them, or use a global enum to define multiple constants at once, e.g.

/* an enum can be used to #define multiple constants */
enum { MAXID = 8, MAXTITLE = 20, MAXEMP = 128 };

and then

typedef struct {    
    char *name;
    char title[MAXTITLE];   /* avoid "magic-numbers", use constants */
    char id[MAXID];
    int yearsExp;
} emp_t;

Your create_emp() function will largely work as is, but there is no need to cast the return of malloc, calloc or realloc in C, see: Do I cast the result of malloc?. Also, I would avoid the use of new as a temporary struct name. While there is no actual conflict in C, new is a keyword in C++ and if you will code in both, best to keep that in mind. With a couple of tweaks, you would write create_emp() as follows:

emp_t *create_emp (const char *name, const char *title, 
                    const char *id, int yrxp) {
    emp_t *newemp;  /* new is a keyword in C++ best to avoid */

    newemp = malloc (sizeof *newemp);   /* don't cast return of malloc */
    /* if you allocate, you must validate */
    if (newemp == NULL) {
        perror ("malloc-newemp");
        return NULL;
    }
    newemp->name = malloc (strlen(name) + 1);
    if (newemp->name == NULL) {
        perror ("malloc-newemp->name");
        free (newemp);
        return NULL;
    }
    strcpy (newemp->name, name);
    strcpy (newemp->title, title);
    strcpy (newemp->id, id);
    newemp->yearsExp = yrxp;

    return newemp;
}

(note: always validate each allocation. malloc, calloc & realloc can and do fail)

Lastly, in main(), you can use an index (ndx below) instead of the magic-number 2 and increment the index with each addition. While you are doing well to use field-width modifiers to control your output field size, for strings (and all conversion specifiers) you can include the '-' flag as part of the conversion specifier to make the field Left-Justified to align your output properly. The remainder of your code is fine.

Putting it altogether, you could do something like the following:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

/* an enum can be used to #define multiple constants */
enum { MAXID = 8, MAXTITLE = 20, MAXEMP = 128 };
#define ADMIN   "Administrator" /* simple #defines are fine */
#define MNG     "Manager"       /* string literals are fine as well */
#define PROG    "Programmer"    /* (up to you) */

typedef struct {    
    char *name;
    char title[MAXTITLE];   /* avoid "magic-numbers", use constants */
    char id[MAXID];
    int yearsExp;
} emp_t;

emp_t *create_emp (const char *name, const char *title, 
                    const char *id, int yrxp) {
    emp_t *newemp;  /* new is a keyword in C++ best to avoid */

    newemp = malloc (sizeof *newemp);   /* don't cast return of malloc */
    /* if you allocate, you must validate */
    if (newemp == NULL) {
        perror ("malloc-newemp");
        return NULL;
    }
    newemp->name = malloc (strlen(name) + 1);
    if (newemp->name == NULL) {
        perror ("malloc-newemp->name");
        free (newemp);
        return NULL;
    }
    strcpy (newemp->name, name);
    strcpy (newemp->title, title);
    strcpy (newemp->id, id);
    newemp->yearsExp = yrxp;

    return newemp;
}

void free_emp (emp_t *employee) {
    free (employee->name);
    free (employee);
}

int main (void) {

    int i, ndx = 0;     /* use an index instead of magic-numbers */

    emp_t *everyone[MAXEMP] = {NULL};

    everyone[ndx++] = create_emp ("Mike Papamichail", PROG, "A197482", 3);
    everyone[ndx++] = create_emp ("Maria Mamalaki", MNG, "Z104781", 6);
    everyone[ndx++] = create_emp ("Sam Sunami", ADMIN, "B426310", 10);

    for (i = 0; i < ndx; i++) { /* %- to left justify fields */
        if (everyone[i]) {      /* validate not NULL */
            printf ("%-15s \t %-15s \t %-10s \t %4d\n", everyone[i]->name, 
                    everyone[i]->title, everyone[i]->id, 
                    everyone[i]->yearsExp);
            free_emp (everyone[i]);
            everyone[i] = NULL;
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

(note: the change from everyone[0]->name to everyone[i]->name, etc.., otherwise the output never changes)

Example Use/Output

$ ./bin/emp_struct
Mike Papamichail         Programmer              A197482            3
Maria Mamalaki           Manager                 Z104781            6
Sam Sunami               Administrator           B426310           10

Look things over and let me know if you have further questions.

Answer 2

At the end, you're looping through your array, printing everyone[0] and then freeing everyone[i]. So on the second iteration, everyone[0] will be null and the code crashes...