RE: a problem with checking if a word has been entered already

[Tristan M]

ah, thanks for the tip and the explanation, the clears things up a bit for 
me:D, however my problem still persists, i did a little change in where the 
log is, and as obviously expected it changed the output a bit, heres the 
code:

void do_wtcorrect(CHAR_DATA *ch, char *argument)
{
        int points;
        int length;
        char announce[MAX_INPUT_LENGTH];
        char log_buf[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
        DESCRIPTOR_DATA *d;
        if ( is_exact_name(argument,wordtwist.word) )
                return;
        strcat(wordtwist.word," ");
        strcat(wordtwist.name," ");
        strcat(wordtwist.word,argument);
        sprintf(log_buf,"%s",wordtwist.word);
        strcat(wordtwist.name,ch->name);
        log_string(log_buf);

and the log would look something like this if a person guessed nasal, naval, 
nemeral(assume thats a word lol):
nasal
Namenasal naval
Namenasal NameNaval nemeral

etc

i put in this free_string()'s, but im assuming this has something to do with 
my wordtwist_data structure because it keeps adding them together if theyre 
in the same structure, i think. im going to post my structure and everything 
that has to do with it and hopefully if ive gone wrong somewhere someone can 
point it out to me:

in merc.h:
struct  wordtwist_data
{
        int turns_left;
        char *first;
        char *last;
        char dict[MAX_STRING_LENGTH];
        char *word;
        char *name;
        bool newround;
};

typedef struct  wordtwist_data  WORDTWIST;

extern          WORDTWIST               wordtwist;

db.c:
WORDTWIST               wordtwist;


did i go wrong anywhere here that could be causing this problem with 
wordtwist.word and wordtwist.name


From: "Richard Lindsey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Tristan M" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <rom@rom.org>
Subject: RE: a problem with checking if a word has been entered already
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 14:40:51 -0500

ok, well one thing i saw that could use a little tweaking in your newly 
posted function is a memory leak i see, which is probably why it's 
trampling into your users' space and showing by their prompt and in their 
prefix...

Where this is:

wordtwist.word = str_dup( "" );
wordtwist.name = str_dup( "" );

make sure that before you str_dup those you free_string them first, here's 
what happens:

the first time they're initialized in the code, they'll get a set of 
addresses, say 1300 and 2300 for instance... after adding words to them and 
then completing one round, they may be say... 100 char's long each, ending 
at 1400 and 2400 respectively... then you set the pointers to the beginning 
of that memory space = to str_dup( "" ), which basically puts an empty 
string into a new spot of memory, say 3300, and returns that address to 
wordtwist.word, and another one at 4300 to wordtwist.name, and the 200 
memory spaces that were allocated to the previous strings are then lost and 
can't be reused until the mud process dies and that space is freed to the 
OS... leaks like that can inadvertently trample onto other sections of 
memory...

so anyway, i had a problem like this just a while back, if you go search 
the archives for something along the lines of "argument corrupted in 
transit", and it was due to a memory leak... try patching that and see if 
it helps any, if not we can always explore other options :)

wavewave
Richard Lindsey.
D&j)b       bN2&!0܂&Ybا~

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