Issues with points and char arrays.

[emni5317]

I am attempting to build a wordcount program for a homework problem.
When I run my program I get a segmentation fault(core dumped) printed to the terminal.

I believe I know where the issue is but I do not understand how to resolve it. My code is as follows.


void WordCounts::tallyWords(string sentence)

{
int length = sentence.length();

char* str = new char[length + 1]; // create a new char array

strcpy(str, sentence.c_str()); // copy sentence into str

// splitting words using punctuations as delimeters

char* pointer = strtok (str," ,.-?><:;[]{}|/\"\'\\!");

while (pointer != NULL) // loop the char array
{
int i;
for( i = 0 ; i < index ; i++ )
{
// if word is found
if(word[i] == pointer)
{
// increase the count of word
count[i]++;
// break out of loop
break;
}
}
// if word was not found
if(i == index)

{
// add word

word[index] = pointer;
// set the count to 1

count[index] = 1;
index++;
}
pointer = strtok (NULL, " ,.-?><:;[]{}|/\"\'\\!");
}
}


From what I have read on other websites the usual issue is that my first pointer is not initialized to anything however,I thought that is what I was doing with these lines of code.

int length = sentence.length();
char* str = new char[length + 1];

but it does not seem to work. What might I be able to do differently to make this work?

[kbw]

Lookup strdup(), it'll save a few lines of prep code.

You have to use strcmp() to compare C strings (in char arrays).

You appear to be using global variables, work and index. You should pass these in as parameters.

Remember to free str.