Undefined behavior when modifying elements of a pointer array of structs in C
I just started working with I tried several approaches but none seem to work... I'm having a hard time understanding I'm encountering undefined behavior while trying to modify elements of an array of pointers to structs. I have a struct `Person` that contains a name, and I'm trying to allocate an array of pointers to `Person` dynamically. However, when I attempt to modify the names in the array, I get inconsistent results. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```c #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> typedef struct { char *name; } Person; int main() { int n = 5; Person **people = malloc(n * sizeof(Person *)); if (!people) return 1; for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) { people[i] = malloc(sizeof(Person)); if (!people[i]) return 1; people[i]->name = malloc(20 * sizeof(char)); // Allocate memory for the name snprintf(people[i]->name, 20, "Person %d", i); } // Modifying the name of the first person strcpy(people[0]->name, "Updated Person"); // Print names for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) { printf("%s\n", people[i]->name); } // Free memory for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) { free(people[i]->name); free(people[i]); } free(people); return 0; } ``` When I run this code, the output seems fine initially, but sometimes I get random junk values in the names or segmentation faults when I try to access `people[i]->name` after the modification. I've double-checked the memory allocation, and it seems correct. I'm using GCC version 11.2 on Ubuntu 20.04. Could this be an issue with how I handle the pointers or memory? What best practices should I follow to avoid such undefined behaviors? Any feedback is welcome! I'm working in a macOS environment. I'm working in a macOS environment. How would you solve this?