Problem when passing a structure containing an array of 2D-chars array to a function
 

Hello.

Here's my structure:

struct settings {

char setting[40][255];

};

Here's the function that is supposed to take a pointer to an instance of the above structure and modify it :

void changeSetting(struct settings *tempSettings, char *newValue, int indexValue) 

{

        if( indexValue<40){   // to avoid out of boundary problems

        // according to the debugger, the program crashes in this line :        

        strcpy(tempSettings->setting[indexValue], newValue)};  

}

Now, here is my main :

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#include <stdlib.h>

#include <main.h> //contains the struct + changeSetting function



int main()

{

struct settings MySettings;   

changeSetting(&MySettings, "penguin", 0);  



// supposetly the line above will assign "penguin" to MySettings.setting[0]

// but program crashes



return 0; // literally *sigh* 

}

I've been debugging for about 13 hours now, not to mention Googling / looking in
mailinglists .


I think it's something to do with the last line in changeSetting function, but I can't point where exactly! Am I supposed to add brackets somewhere ? ( i.e. (*tempSettings)->etc ) or is the problem with me using "->" instead of "." to access the members ? or is it some problem / limitation with C pointers/structures/2D-arrays-in-structures ?

Any help / guidance would be appreciated =)

Thanks in advance,
Axel

P.S: forgot to mention, something identical to this was posted here 2 years ago by another user ( found it when I searched here ). Unfortunately, there was no answer =\
Link : http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread28036.html

Re: Problem when passing a structure containing an array of 2D-chars array to a function
 

P.P.S: Using MSVC7.1 compiler

Re: Problem when passing a structure containing an array of 2D-chars array to a funct
 

One of the lovely things about C...

Check line 5 of changeSetting(): you've got the ; on the wrong side of the }.

Every single statement in C must be terminated by a semi-colon. It's the little things that get you...

Re: Problem when passing a structure containing an array of 2D-chars array to a funct
 

There's nothing wrong with your code except:

strcpy(tempSettings->setting[indexValue], newValue)};

that semicolon needs to be before the closing }

you can do (*tempSettings).setting[indexValue] or what you just wrote tempSettings->setting[indexValue]. Both are the same.

Re: Problem when passing a structure containing an array of 2D-chars array to a funct
 

Assuming the ; is a typo (it won't even compile), then it seems fine here (cygwin/gcc)

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#include <stdlib.h>



struct settings {

    char setting[40][255];

};



void changeSetting(struct settings *tempSettings, char *newValue,

                   int indexValue)

{

    if (indexValue < 40) {

        strcpy(tempSettings->setting[indexValue], newValue);

    }

}



int main()

{

    struct settings MySettings;

    changeSetting(&MySettings, "penguin", 0);

    printf( "Penguin Power=%s\n", MySettings.setting[0] );

    return 0;

}



$ gcc -W -Wall -ansi -pedantic foo.c

$ ./a.exe

Penguin Power=penguin

Your struct is about 10K in size. This shouldn't be a problem if your compiler is a 32-bit compiler, but some old 16-bit compilers used very small (like 3K) stack sizes, and this would obviously blow that right out of the water.