Incomplete pointer array to struct. Stack smashing detected

Question

My apologies in advance for the bad-looking code. It's just a proof of concept.

The purpose of the program is to fill the "datapacket", but by individually accessible pointers of the potmeter struct.

The program works with a complete type of *potPointers[3]. It also works with incomplete type *potPointer[]. But then after a successful run, I get:

*** stack smashing detected ***: terminated
Aborted (core dumped)

How do I successfully deal with incomplete pointer arrays to a struct? I can of course put a #define, but is there another way?

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

#define BYTES_DATAWORD_POTMETER 2

typedef struct
{
    uint8_t test;
    uint8_t *datawordPointer[2];
}potmeter;

typedef struct
{
    uint8_t amountOfPots;

    size_t datapacket_size;
    uint8_t *datapacket; // needs to be malloc'ed, don't forget to free it.
    
    // Sort of working with *** stack smashing detected ***: terminated Aborted (core dumped)         
    potmeter *potPointers[];

   // Works without stack smashing.
   // potmeter *potPointers[3];     
     
}overall;


void initPointersToDatapackett(overall *allePots)
{ 
    uint8_t counter = 0;

    for(int i = 0; i < allePots->amountOfPots; i++)
    {
        // Allocate memory per pot
        allePots->potPointers[i] = malloc(sizeof(potmeter));

        // Point pointers to dataword of overall
        allePots->potPointers[i]->datawordPointer[0] = &allePots->datapacket[counter++];
        allePots->potPointers[i]->datawordPointer[1] = &allePots->datapacket[counter++];
        
    }
}



int main()
{
    overall AllePotMeters;

    AllePotMeters.amountOfPots = 3;
    AllePotMeters.datapacket = malloc(AllePotMeters.amountOfPots*BYTES_DATAWORD_POTMETER);
    

    initPointersToDatapackett(&AllePotMeters);

    //Test content of pointers to dataword
    *AllePotMeters.potPointers[0]->datawordPointer[0] = 'A';
    *AllePotMeters.potPointers[0]->datawordPointer[1] = 'B';
    *AllePotMeters.potPointers[1]->datawordPointer[0] = 'C';
    *AllePotMeters.potPointers[1]->datawordPointer[1] = 'D';
    *AllePotMeters.potPointers[2]->datawordPointer[0] = 'E';
    *AllePotMeters.potPointers[2]->datawordPointer[1] = '\0';


    printf("String test %s\n", AllePotMeters.datapacket);


    free(AllePotMeters.potPointers[0]);
    free(AllePotMeters.potPointers[1]);
    free(AllePotMeters.potPointers[2]);
    free(AllePotMeters.datapacket);

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

The feature you are using here is called "flexible array member". If the array size is empty, the size of the overall struct doesn't include the array at all. So a variable of overall type doesn't contain any memory for your potPointers.

It's programmer's responsibility to allocate space for potPointers. Note that this usually means allocating the struct dynamically, using malloc. Then, you (the programmer) can tell it to allocate more memory than sizeof(overall).

For example:

overall *AllePotMeters = malloc(sizeof(overall) + 3 * sizeof(potmeter *));

If AllePotMeters is on stack, the compiler doesn't allocate any memory at all for the flexible array member. So writing to it smashes the stack (i.e. overwrites important data on stack).