System call execve does not return with ls function

Question

I am asked to implement my own shell for an Operating System class.

My shell runs every commands fine, except ls that won't return on execve, which is weird because cd, cp, mv, and all the others main commands are returning okay.

ls is still displaying the right output (the list of files in the folder), but just keep running after (execve hangs and needs a carriage return to finish).

All the options like -l, -a are also working correctly, with the same issue.

EDIT: I modified my code in order to completely avoid any memory leaks (I used valgrind to track them), added some comments so you can see what's going on, but ls is still not returning. Here is the updated version:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <strings.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>

#define MAXPATHLEN 40
#define MAXSIZE 100
#define MAXARGS 10

static char cwd[MAXPATHLEN];

typedef void (*sighandler_t)(int);

void handle_signal(int signo);
void parse_command(char *command, char **arguments);

int main(int argc, char *argv[], char *envp[])
{
    int status;
    char *command;
    char **arguments;

    signal(SIGINT, SIG_IGN);
    signal(SIGINT, handle_signal);
    while(1) {  
        //Allocating memory
        command = calloc(MAXSIZE, sizeof(char));
        arguments = calloc(MAXARGS, sizeof(char *));

        //Print shell name and cwd
        getcwd(cwd,MAXPATHLEN);
        printf("[MY_SHELL]:%s$ ", cwd);
        parse_command(command, arguments);

        //Displays command and arguments
        printf("Command is %s\n", command);
        int i;
        for(i=0; arguments[i] != NULL; ++i){
            printf("Argument %d is %s\n", i, arguments[i]);
        }

        //Fork exec code
        if (fork() != 0){
            waitpid(1, &status, 0);
        } else{
            execve(command, arguments, 0);
        }
        free(command);
        for (i=0; arguments[i] != NULL; ++i) {
            free(arguments[i]);
        }
        free(arguments);
    }
    return 0;
}

void handle_signal(int signo)
{
    getcwd(cwd,MAXPATHLEN);
    printf("\n[MY_SHELL]:%s$ ", cwd);
    fflush(stdout);
}

void parse_command(char *command, char **arguments){
    char buf[MAXSIZE];
    char env[MAXPATHLEN];
    char *tmp;

    //Initiate array values to avoid buffer overflows
    memset(buf, 0, sizeof(buf));
    memset(env, 0, sizeof(env));

    //Read command and put it in a buffer
    char c = '\0';
    int N = 0; //Number of chars in input - shouldn't be more than MAXSIZE
    while(1) {
        c = getchar();
        if (c == '\n')
            break;
        else{
            if (N == MAXSIZE)
                break;
            buf[N] = c;
        }
        ++N;
    }

    //Extract command name (e.g "ls"), fetch path to command, append it to command name
    tmp = strtok(buf, " ");
    strcpy(env, "/bin/");
    size_t len1 = strlen(env);
    size_t len2 = strlen(tmp);
    memcpy(command, env, len1);
    memcpy(command + len1, tmp, len2);

    //Extracts arguments array: arguments[0] is path+command name
    arguments[0] = calloc(strlen(command) + 1, sizeof(char));   
    strcpy(arguments[0], command);
    int i = 1;
    while(1){
        tmp = strtok(NULL, " ");
        if (tmp == NULL)
            break;
        else{
            arguments[i] = calloc(strlen(tmp) + 1, sizeof(char));   
            strcpy(arguments[i],tmp);
            ++i;
        }
    }
}

EDIT 2: This seems to have something to do with STDIN (or STDOUT): similarily than ls, cat makes execve hangs after executing, and I need to carriage return to have my shell line [MY_SHELL]current_working_directory$: line back. Any thoughts on why it is the case ?

Answer 1

In your code, in parse_command() function, you're doing

bzero(arguments, sizeof(char) * MAXARGS);

but at that point of time, arguments is not initialized or allocated memory. So essentially you're trying to write into uninitialized memory. This invokes undefined behaviour.

Same like that, without allocating memory to arguments, you're accessing arguments[0].

Note: As I already mentioned in my comments, do not cast the return value of malloc() and family.