Re: pass a local variable to a function
Lorenzo Beretta <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | org.kernel.vger.linux-c-programming |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
明亮 ha scritto:
> Hi guys,
>
> This is my first email in this list, any help is much appreciated.
> As I know, it's not allowed to pass a local variable to a function,
> because the stack where local variable resides will be reused by other
> functions.
> eg:
> 1 #include <stdio.h>
> 2
> 3 char *fetch();
> 4
> 5 int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
> 6 char *string;
> 7 string = fetch();
> 8 printf("%s\n", string);
> 9 exit(0);
> 10 }
> 11
> 12 char *fetch(){
> 13 char string[10];
> 14 scanf("%s", string);
> 15 return string;
> 16 }
>
> When the application is executed, after input "a", it will produce
> unknown characters, like "8Šè¿ôÿO". Which is like what I expect
>
> However, if I change line 13 to:
> 13 char string[1024];
>
> When I type "a", it echos "a", which is out of my expectation
>
> Why does it behave like this?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> longapple
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>
Try something like this
------
void p(int n){
int onstack;
printf("%p\n", &onstack);
if(n>0) p(n-1);
}
int main(){
p(5);
return 0;
}
------
It should (system dependant) print a sequence of decreasing hex numbers;
that's because each time you call a function on your computer, the local
stack grows downwards.
When you scanf() into a character array, it writes into the first
characters of your array, that is string[0], then string[1], and so on:
notice that the address of string[1] is GREATER than the address of
string[0]...
Summing up there are two cases (assume that X stands for "any value"):
1) string[10]
==> { X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, '\0', 'a' }
2) string[1024]
==> { X, X, X, (long sequence of garbage)..., '\0', a' }
When you call printf(), the printf function overwrites some bytes for
its own stack variables: if it takes more than 10 bytes (eg 42), the
small array will be completely overwritten, while with the big array it
will only overwrite string[1023...980] (which was garbage anyway!),
leaving string[0...979] intact.
I hope that was helpful; try gooling "buffer overflow" for more info
lb
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