c++ - Stack using array

Question

I'm new to coding and was just learning stack and the code below is not giving any output. Can you guys please help me out with what I'm doing wrong in this?

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;

struct stack
{
    int size;
    int top;
    int *arr;
};

int isEmpty(struct stack *ptr)
{
    if(ptr->top==-1)
    {
        return 1;
    }
    return 0;
}

int isFull(struct stack *ptr)
{
    if(ptr->top==ptr->size-1)
    {
        return 1;
    }
    return 0;
}

int main()
{
    struct stack *s;
    s->size = 80;
    s->top=-1;
    s->arr= new int(80);
    
    if(isEmpty(s))
    {
        cout<<"the stack is empty"<<endl;
    }
    else
    {
        cout<<"the stack is not empty"<<endl;
    }
}

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65839895/stack-using-array

Answer 1

Your main bug is that you haven't initialized s to point to anything. You set s->arr using new, but haven't done so for s itself. You dereference s when setting the size, top, etc, and also when checking top. This is undefined behavior.

You need:

struct stack *s = new struct stack;

to fix this.

Also, always remember to check the allocated pointer(s) are not nullptr before proceeding.

You also don't de-allocate the memory (using delete), so you have a memory leak.

Also, you can use instead the defined true and false, instead of 1 and 0, and change the return types to be bool.

Here is a corrected version of your code with the mentioned changes:

#include <iostream>

struct stack {
    int size;
    int top;
    int *arr;
};

bool isEmpty(struct stack *ptr) {
    if (ptr->top == -1) {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

bool isFull(struct stack *ptr) {
    if (ptr->top == ptr->size - 1) {
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

int main(void) {

    /* you have to initialize s to point to something */
    struct stack *s = new struct stack;
    
    /* check for nullptr */
    if (s == nullptr) {
        return EXIT_FAILURE;
    }
    
    s->size = 80;
    s->top = -1;
    
    /* array of 80 integers */
    s->arr = new int[s->size];
    
    /* check for nullptr */
    if (s->arr == nullptr) {
        return 1;
    }
    
    if (isEmpty(s)) {
        std::cout << "the stack is empty
";
    } else {
        std::cout << "the stack is not empty
";
    }
    
    /* remember to de-allocate the memory -- in the reverse order */
    delete[] s->arr;
    delete s;
    
    return 0;
}

Tip: always compile your code with some basic compilation flags to check for this sort of thing. For example, you might compile using at least:

g++ -Wall -Werror -Wextra program.cpp

Also, consider using valgrind, which is a powerful tool for detecting memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses.

A few extra notes:

• The code reads like a C program more or less, as pointed out in the comments, so consider whether you want to instead write it as a C program, or adapt it more to C++
• You could also instead declare s to be on the stack instead (struct stack s;), access its fields in main like s.size, s.top, etc and then pass s in by its address (&s).