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Discussion on: I'm an Expert in Memory Management & Segfaults, Ask Me Anything!

 
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NatePolizogo
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Jason C. McDonald

for some reason decides to be whatever value it want's despite the fact that it is in a for loop.

This means it is reading from uninitialized memory. Common reasons for this:

  • You declared a variable, or dynamically allocated memory, but never initialized the memory with a value.

  • You are using a pointer (or reference) to either a position in memory which has already been freed (dangling pointer/reference), or which has never been allocated (wild pointer/reference). This can happen with either the heap or the stack; it's not limited to dynamic allocation.

  • You are exceeding the boundaries of an array or string (buffer overrun).