List of Common Reasons for Segmentation Faults in C/C++

The main reason for segmentation fault is accessing memory that is either not initialized, out of bounds for your program or trying to modify string literals. These may cause a segmentation fault though it is not guaranteed that they will cause a segmentation fault. Here are some of the common reasons for segmentation faults −

• Accessing an array out of bounds
• Dereferencing NULL pointers
• Dereferencing freed memory
• Dereferencing uninitialized pointers
• Incorrect use of the "&" (address of) and "*" (dereferencing) operators
• Improper formatting specifiers in printf and scanf statements
• Stack overflow
• Writing to read-only memory

Ramu Prasad

Published on 28-Feb-2018 11:31:06