memset causing coredump

[yag]

I have a below line of code which i think the source of coredump

memset(msisdn,'\0',10);

can anybody please explain on which instances memset causes core?

Thx in advance,

[Denis]

please make sure, that msisdn points on allocated memory by malloc before using memset.

[iharrold]

what is msisdn?

It should be an allocated char* array (or interpreted as such).

[moorecm]

Two possible scenarios come to mind:

1. msisdn is not pointing to your dynamically allocated memory
2. memset is writing beyond the size of what has been allocated

[yag]

Thanx all for a very useful response. I forgot to mention that msisdn is character array,
the code is exactly as below.

char msisdn[10];

memset(msisdn,'\0',10);

the value to be stored in msisdn is of 8 digits only.

[helios]

A program should not crash by calling memset() like that on such an array. If it's crashing, there must memory corruption caused by a bug elsewhere in the program.