I'm really having a hard time with speller! Gives me a seg. fault. Please, help!

Question

This is my code for load and valgrind points at line 127 as the reason for the seg. falut. Please, can someone point out to me why. Thanks.`/** *Loads dictionary into memory. Returns true if successful else false **/ void initialize(node* currentNode) { currentNode ->is_word = false; for(int k = 0; k < 27; k++) { currentNode ->children[k] = NULL; } }

bool load(const char dictionary) {
root = NULL; node newNode = NULL; //point root to the travasal node: currentNode

      //create root node
    root = calloc (1, sizeof(node));
    currentNode = root; 

//open dictionary file & check if it's null 
inptr = fopen (dictionary, "r");

if (inptr == NULL)
{
    return false;
    printf ("Could not open dictionary\n");
    fclose(inptr);
}

for (letter = fgetc(inptr); letter != EOF; letter = fgetc(inptr))
{
    if (isalpha (letter))
    {
        tolower(letter);
        indes = (letter - 'a');
    }

    if (letter == '\'')
    {
        indes = 26;
    }

    currentNode = currentNode -> children[indes];

    //if currentNode is null, malloc newnode
    if (currentNode -> children[indes] == NULL)
    {
        newNode = calloc (1, sizeof(node));
        currentNode = newNode;
    }

    currentNode = currentNode -> children[indes];

    if (currentNode -> is_word == true && letter == '\n')
    {
        word_count++;
    }

    currentNode = root;
}
    fclose(inptr);
        `

Answer 1

The segmentation fault error is probably due to the part of your code corresponding to callocing new node for the letter if NULL.

Your code:

if (currentNode -> children[indes] == NULL)
{
    newNode = calloc (1, sizeof(node));
    currentNode = newNode;
}

currentNode = currentNode -> children[indes];

You should alter it to following lines of code:

if (currentNode -> children[indes] == NULL)
{
    newNode = calloc (1, sizeof(node));
    currentNode->children[indes] = newNode;
}

currentNode = currentNode -> children[indes];

This is probably the cause for segmentation fault.