PSET6 Parse Segmentation Fault

Question

My parse code seems to work fine but after it runs there is a segmentation fault. It isn't any of the other methods, and I just can't figure out why it is doing this. I think it has something to do with query and abs_path though.

Here is my parse method:

char requestLine[strlen(line) + 1];
strcpy(requestLine,line);
requestLine[LimitRequestLine] = '\0';

char* methodCopy = strtok(requestLine," ");
char* requestCopy = strtok(NULL," ");
char* httpCopy = strtok(NULL,"\r\n");

char method[strlen(methodCopy)+1];
strcpy(method,methodCopy);
char request[strlen(requestCopy)+1];
strcpy(request,requestCopy);
char http[strlen(httpCopy)+1];
strcpy(http,httpCopy);

method[strlen(method)] = '\0';
request[strlen(request)] = '\0';
http[strlen(http)] = '\0';

if (strcmp(method,"GET") != 0) {
    error(405);
}
if (strncmp(request,"/",1) != 0) {
    error(501);
}
if (strchr(request,'"') != NULL) {
    error(400);
}
if (strcmp(http,"HTTP/1.1") != 0) {
    error(505);
}

char* absCopy = strtok(request, "?");
char* queryCopy = strtok(NULL,"\0");

if (queryCopy != NULL) {
    strcpy(abs_path,absCopy);
    strcpy(query,queryCopy);

    abs_path[strlen(abs_path)] = '\0';
    query[strlen(query)] = '\0';
} else {
    strcpy(abs_path,absCopy);

    abs_path[strlen(abs_path)] = '\0';
    query[0] = '\0';
}

if (strchr(abs_path,'?') != NULL) {
    error(400);
}
if (strchr(query,'"') != NULL) {
    error(400);
}

return true;

EDIT: After using debug50, it seems the problem might be in my indexes method on line 4 strcpy(php, path);. That is where debug50 stops after I get the segmentation fault.

char* php = "";
char* html = "";

strcpy(php, path);
strcat(php, "/index.php");

strcpy(html, path);
strcat(html, "/index.html");

printf("\n%s\n",php);
printf("\n%s\n",html);
if (access(php,R_OK) != -1) {
    return php;
} else if (access(html,R_OK) != -1) {
    return html;
}
return NULL;

Answer 1

When you declare a string literal, as with char* php = "";,it is stored in read-only memory. So it is indeed seg-faulting here strcpy(php, path); because it cannot change read-only memory.

Even if that was not the case, php (and html) are not allocated for any memory. So the strcpy/strcat are stomping on someone else's memory (which could be a seg-fault waiting to happen). They need to be allocated. (Think malloc or calloc).

Note this "hint" from the spec:

this function should dynamically allocate memory on the heap for the returned string.