Segmentation fault on fclose

[ibackus]

I'm trying to write a very simple program to print out in the terminal the first 10 entries in a long binary file composed of floats. The idea is to make this work something like 'head' in the linux terminal (but for binary files). The problem I have is I get a 'segmentation fault.' As far as I can find, it's something related to closing the file. Here is my code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main ()
{
int i;
char *name;
const char * fname;
float  *array;
array = (float*)calloc(10,sizeof(float));
cout << "Enter a filename: ";
cin >> name;
fname = (const char*)name;
cout << "\n\n*******" << fname << "*******\n\n";	
FILE * pFile;
pFile = fopen(fname,"rb");
if (pFile==NULL) {fputs ("File error",stderr); exit (1);} // Exit with error message
fread(array,sizeof(float),10,pFile);
for (i=0;i<10;i++){
	printf("%2i.     % f\n",i+1,array[i]);
}
fclose(pFile);
return 0;
}

And here is what I get when I operate the program on the file 'adjusted_timeseries.bin':
Enter a filename: adjusted_timeseries.bin

*******adjusted_timeseries.bin*******

1. -1.470366
2. -1.398241
3. -1.612171
4. -2.791864
5. -0.540432
6. -0.798207
7. 1.061068
8. 0.320786
9. -0.771727
10. -1.118346
Segmentation fault

[Ancient Dragon]

1) name is an uninitialized pointer. You have to allocate memory for it before it can be used as an input string (line 14). Just declare name as a character array instead of a pointer, such as char name[80]; line 11: There is no reason to make that variable a pointer since all you want is 10 floats. Just declare it as an array float array[10]; line 12: You can just delete this line if you make that variable an array of floats as above. In c++ programs you should use the new operator instead of malloc() or calloc().

[ibackus]

1) name is an uninitialized pointer. You have to allocate memory for it before it can be used as an input string (line 14). Just declare name as a character array instead of a pointer, such as char name[80]; line 11: There is no reason to make that variable a pointer since all you want is 10 floats. Just declare it as an array float array[10]; line 12: You can just delete this line if you make that variable an array of floats as above. In c++ programs you should use the new operator instead of malloc() or calloc().

Thanks! This all worked great--such a simple solution. Just curious, what's the operator to use instead of malloc() or calloc()? I've just been programming for a few days and I've been teaching myself mostly from a mix of example c and c++ programs.

[thomas_naveen]

As Ancient Dragon has mentioned in his post, you should be using 'new' and 'delete' operators in C++.

malloc and free can be used in C.

[thomas_naveen]

Please click here for more information.

[ibackus]

Please click here for more information.

Okay, I see now. thanks!