I am writing some code that needs to read fasta files, so part of my code (included below) is a fasta parser. As a single sequence can span multiple lines in the fasta format, I need to concatenate multiple successive lines read from the file into a single string. I do this, by realloc'ing the string buffer after reading every line, to be the current length of the sequence plus the length of the line read in. I do some other stuff, like stripping white space etc. All goes well for the first sequence, but fasta files can contain multiple sequences. So similarly, I have a dynamic array of structs with a two strings (title, and actual sequence), being "char *". Again, as I encounter a new title (introduced by a line beginning with '>') I increment the number of sequences, and realloc the sequence list buffer. The realloc segfaults on allocating space for the second sequence with
*** glibc detected *** ./stackoverflow: malloc(): memory corruption: 0x09fd9210 ***
Aborted
For the life of me I can't see why. I've run it through gdb and everything seems to be working (i.e. everything is initialised, the values seems sane)... Here's the code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <errno.h>
//a struture to keep a record of sequences read in from file, and their titles
typedef struct {
char *title;
char *sequence;
} sequence_rec;
//string convenience functions
//checks whether a string consists entirely of white space
int empty(const char *s) {
int i;
i = 0;
while (s[i] != 0) {
if (!isspace(s[i])) return 0;
i++;
}
return 1;
}
//substr allocates and returns a new string which is a substring of s from i to
//j exclusive, where i < j; If i or j are negative they refer to distance from
//the end of the s
char *substr(const char *s, int i, int j) {
char *ret;
if (i < 0) i = strlen(s)-i;
if (j < 0) j = strlen(s)-j;
ret = malloc(j-i+1);
strncpy(ret,s,j-i);
return ret;
}
//strips white space from either end of the string
void strip(char **s) {
int i, j, len;
char *tmp = *s;
len = strlen(*s);
i = 0;
while ((isspace(*(*s+i)))&&(i < len)) {
i++;
}
j = strlen(*s)-1;
while ((isspace(*(*s+j)))&&(j > 0)) {
j--;
}
*s = strndup(*s+i, j-i);
free(tmp);
}
int main(int argc, char**argv) {
sequence_rec *sequences = NULL;
FILE *f = NULL;
char *line = NULL;
size_t linelen;
int rcount;
int numsequences = 0;
f = fopen(argv[1], "r");
if (f == NULL) {
fprintf(stderr, "Error opening %s: %s\n", argv[1], strerror(errno));
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
rcount = getline(&line, &linelen, f);
while (rcount != -1) {
while (empty(line)) rcount = getline(&line, &linelen, f);
if (line[0] != '>') {
fprintf(stderr,"Sequence input not in valid fasta format\n");
return EXIT_FAILURE;
}
numsequences++;
sequences = realloc(sequences,sizeof(sequence_rec)*numsequences);
sequences[numsequences-1].title = strdup(line+1); strip(&sequences[numsequences-1].title);
rcount = getline(&line, &linelen, f);
sequences[numsequences-1].sequence = malloc(1); sequences[numsequences-1].sequence[0] = 0;
while ((!empty(line))&&(line[0] != '>')) {
strip(&line);
sequences[numsequences-1].sequence = realloc(sequences[numsequences-1].sequence, strlen(sequences[numsequences-1].sequence)+strlen(line)+1);
strcat(sequences[numsequences-1].sequence,line);
rcount = getline(&line, &linelen, f);
}
}
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
I think the memory corruption problem might be the result of how you're handling the data used in your getline() calls. Basically, line is reallocated via strndup() in the calls to strip(), so the buffer size being tracked in linelen by getline() will no longer be accurate. getline() may overrun the buffer.
while ((!empty(line))&&(line[0] != '>')) {
strip(&line); // <-- assigns a `strndup()` allocation to `line`
sequences[numsequences-1].sequence = realloc(sequences[numsequences-1].sequence, strlen(sequences[numsequences-1].sequence)+strlen(line)+1);
strcat(sequences[numsequences-1].sequence,line);
rcount = getline(&line, &linelen, f); // <-- the buffer `line` points to might be
// smaller than `linelen` bytes
}