👀 Views: 2 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-11

c memory-management recursion C

I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm working with a segmentation fault when I try to allocate memory for a dynamic array within a recursive function. The function is supposed to generate a Fibonacci series up to `n` elements. The logic seems correct, but when I run the code with a larger value of `n`, I get a segmentation fault. Here’s the relevant code snippet: ```c #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int* fibonacci(int n) { if (n <= 0) return NULL; int* fib = (int*)malloc(n * sizeof(int)); if (fib == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Memory allocation failed\n"); return NULL; } if (n == 1) { fib[0] = 0; } else if (n == 2) { fib[0] = 0; fib[1] = 1; } else { int* prev_fib = fibonacci(n - 1); for (int i = 0; i < n - 1; ++i) { fib[i] = prev_fib[i]; } fib[n - 1] = prev_fib[n - 2] + prev_fib[n - 3]; free(prev_fib); } return fib; } int main() { int n = 10; int* result = fibonacci(n); if (result) { for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) { printf("%d ", result[i]); } free(result); } return 0; } ``` When I run this code with `n = 10`, it seems to work fine, but if I increase `n` to 30 or more, I start getting a segmentation fault. I've checked for memory leaks, and I’m freeing the dynamically allocated memory, but I’m not sure if the scenario arises from the recursive allocation itself or if there's a question with accessing uninitialized memory. Could it be that I’m not handling the base cases correctly, or is there a more fundamental scenario with how I’m allocating and freeing memory in a recursive context? Any insights would be appreciated! For context: I'm using C on Windows. What am I doing wrong? I'm working on a web app that needs to handle this. What am I doing wrong? What would be the recommended way to handle this?