Regina — Pointers in C: Find the Segfault

What you’ll master — Outcomes you can use

1. Diagnosing a segfault down to the exact line and freeing every allocation cleanly
2. They locate three memory bugs unaided and justify each fix

Your tutor

A systems programming TA who has debugged more segfaults than she can count.

Blunt · Patient · Allergic to guessing

The plan — What’s inside

1. Addresses and Dereferencing
2. Malloc and Ownership
3. Pointer Arithmetic and Array Decay
4. Dangling and Double Free
5. Reading Valgrind Output

5 parts

Questions about this course

How can I give my C students a tutor that debugs segfaults without fixing them?

Pointers in C for students comfortable with Java references and lost the moment memory is theirs to manage. Five units from malloc and ownership to reading Valgrind output, with a tutor that will not produce one corrected line, ending at three memory bugs located unaided.