segmentation fault error when reading a file in C

Question

I was trying to read a file char by char but the debugger when reaches the fscanf gives back a segmentation fault error, here's my code:

int main(){
FILE *inFile;
char *carattere = NULL;

inFile = fopen("../file.txt", "r");
if (inFile == NULL){    
    return -1;
}

while(fscanf(inFile, "%c", carattere) != EOF){  //segmentation fault
    printf("%c ", *carattere);
}
fclose(inFile);
return 0;}

(I've recentely reinstalled my IDE).

Suppose you wrote `fscanf(inFile, "%c", NULL)`. What behavior would you expect? — William Pursell, Oct 04 '22 at 11:45
You guys are right, basically I used a pointer whitout the referred thing, thanks — Sebastian, Oct 04 '22 at 11:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 04 '22 at 11:33

2

You should provide some space for your character to be read. Where does carattere point to when you try to write into it?

answered Oct 04 '22 at 11:33

Remo.D

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '22 at 11:47

1

carattere is NULL, which cannot store even a single character. So, you need to give it some memory at least 2 bytes, 1^st byte for the character itself and 2^nd byte for '\0'.

So, initialize carattere like this:

char carattere[2] = { 0 };

answered Oct 04 '22 at 11:47

Darth-CodeX

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segmentation fault error when reading a file in C

2 Answers2