C segmentation fault-char pointers

Question

I need help figuring out why I am getting a segmentation fault here. I have gone over it and I think I am doing something wrong with the pointers, but I can figure out what.

Answer 1

char* a;
*a = 'a';
/*SEGMENTATION FAULT HERE!*/

There isn't any "there" there. You've declared a and left it uninitialized. Then you tried to use it as an address. You need to make a point to something.

One example:

char buffer[512];
char *a = buffer;

(Note buffer has a maximum size and when it falls out of scope you cannot reference any pointers to it.)

Or dynamic memory:

char *a = malloc(/* Some size... */);

if (!a) { /* TODO: handle memory allocation failure */ }

// todo - do something with a.

free(a);