causes_segfault.md

Reasons behind a "core dump"

1. Dereferencing a pointer which has been assigned NULL

   Example code snippet:

    char *a = NULL;
    printf("String = %s",a);
   

2. Dereferencing a pointer whose memoery has been freed

   Example code snippet:

    char *a;
    a = malloc(sizeof(char));
    free(a);
    printf("String = %s",a);
   

3. Assigning value to a pointer without allocating memory

   Example code snippet:

    char *buf;
    fgets(buf, 1024, stdin);
    printf("%s\n", buf);
   

4. Other erraneous access of memory

   Examples:

    Writing to an an array at a point beyond its memory limit
   
    A Recursive function that uses up all of the stack space assigned to it's program