Parse $PATH variable and save the directory names into an array of strings

I want to parse the $PATH variable of Linux, and then save the directory names that are getting separated with ':' into an array of strings.

I know it's a simple task but I am stuck and any help would be nice.

My code so far is something like this but something ain't right.

char **array;
char *path_string;
char *path_var = getenv("PATH");
int size_of_path_var = strlen(path_var);

path_string = strtok(path_var, ":");
while (path_string != NULL) {
    ss = strlen(path_string)
    array[i] = (char *)malloc(ss + 1);
    array[i] = path_string; //this is actually all i want to do for every path
    i++;
    path_string = strtok(NULL, ":");
}

Solution

2 main things wrong with your code, pretty much summarized by the comments:

you strtok a public buffer (returned by getenv)
you don't know how many variables will be in the buffer so you don't allocate the array of arrays at all!

Let me propose a working implementation not using strtok, and thus allowing to detect empty path (and replace it by . as Jonathan hinted). Compiles without any warnings using gcc -Wall -Wwrite-strings:

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

int main()
{
    const char **array;
    const char *orig_path_var = getenv("PATH");
    char *path_var = strdup(orig_path_var ? orig_path_var : ""); // just in case PATH is NULL, very unlikely
    const char *the_dot = ".";
    int j;
    int len=strlen(path_var);
    int nb_colons=0;
    char pathsep = ':';
    int current_colon = 0;

    // first count how many paths we have, and "split" almost like strtok would do
    for (j=0;j<len;j++)
    {
        if (path_var[j]==pathsep)
        {
            nb_colons++;
            path_var[j] = '\0';
        }       
    }

    // allocate the array of strings
    array=malloc((nb_colons+1) * sizeof(*array));

    array[0] = path_var;  // first path

    // rest of paths
    for (j=0;j<len;j++)
    {
        if (path_var[j]=='\0')
        {
            current_colon++;
            array[current_colon] = path_var+j+1;
            if (array[current_colon][0]=='\0')
            {
                // special case: add dot if path is empty
                array[current_colon] = the_dot;
            }

        }
    }

    for (j=0;j<nb_colons+1;j++)
    {
        printf("Path %d: <%s>\n",j,array[j]);
    }

    return(0);
}

Details of the operations:

make a copy of the env string to avoid butchering it
count the colons (to make it work with windows, just replace with ;) and tokenize
allocate the array according to number of colons + 1 (1 more token than number of separators!)
second pass to go through the string again and fill it with parts of the tokenized string (no need to allocate again, the original string is already allocated)
special case: empty path: replace by .. Could display a warning to tell the user that this is not safe.
print the result