fclose, fopen and fwrite issues with writing multiple files

Question

I have a program that records data from a serial port. Every so often, I want to split up files such that the data logs don't become very large. The problem is, after I recreate the FILE* and try to write into it, the program crashes. No compiler errors/warnings before hand also...

The program does create one log for the first time interval, but once it's time to create a new data log, it crashes at the fwrite.

First off, initializations/declarations.

char * DATA_DIR = "C:\DATA";
sprintf(path,"%s%s%s",DATA_DIR,curtime,".log"); //curtime is just the current time in a string
FILE * DATA_LOG = fopen(path, "wb+");   

And later on in a while loop

if(((CURRENT_TIME-PREVIOUS_TIME) > (SEC_IN_MINUTE * MINUTE_CHUNKS) ) && (MINUTE_CHUNKS != 0) && FIRST_TIME == 0) //all this does is just checks if its time to make a new file
{
    fclose(DATA_LOG); //end the current fileread

    char * path; 
    char curtime[16];

    //gets the current time and saves it to a file name
    sprintf(curtime , "%s" , currentDateTime());
    sprintf(path,"%s%s%s",DATA_DIR,curtime,".log");

    DATA_LOG = fopen(path, "wb+"); //open the new file

    //just some logic (not relevant to problem)
    PREVIOUS_TIME = CURRENT_TIME; 
    newDirFlag = 1;
}
fwrite(cdata , sizeof(char) , numChars , DATA_LOG); //crashes here. cdata, sizeof, and numChars don't change values

Any ideas why is this happening? I'm stumped.

Answer 1

Your MAIN problem is that char * path; has no memory assigned to it. This means that you are writing to some RANDOM [1] location in memory.

I would suggest that you use char path[PATH_MAX]; - that way you don't have to worry about allocating and later deallocating the storage for your path.

Alternatively, you could use:

stringstream ss;

ss << DATA_DIR << currentDateTime() << ".log";
string path = ss.str();
fopen(path.c_str(), "wb+")

which is a more C++ style solution.

[1] By random, I don't mean truly a random number, but some unknown value that happens to be in that location on the stack. It is almost always NOT a good place to store a string.

Answer 2

Couple of problems, path has no memory allocated (you're writing stuff to some random memory address which is bad). You also should check the return values of fwrite fopen for errors. If there is one use perror so you know what the problem is. It's likely the fopen is failing or you're corrupting your stack by writing to path.

Also use snprintf it's much safter than just sprintf which is vulnerable to buffer overflow.

EDIT: just saw your comment that it's c++. Why not use std::string and fstream instead? They are much safer than what you're currently doing (and probably easier).