Upsetting pointer behaviour

[THOM BOHK]

I'm trying to debug the insert function in my spellcheck, and I'm
coming across some strange behaviour when I ask for adresses

so I attempt to insert the following words into my trie:

dog
cat
iguana
mouse
parakeet

and I start accessing and printing things on my trie afterwards to see
that everything is where it should be. it appears somehow that a z is
making it into the trie. after inserting dog i go

cout << "d's z POINTER IS " << dic.letters[3]->letters[25] << endl;

and when i run the code it prints 0, for NULL, which it should.

after inserting the rest of the words, i ask again

cout << "z POINTER IS " << dic.letters[3]->letters[25] << endl;

and i get

0x7fffb54cd390

strange.

so back in my code where I look for the pointer to z from the d node,
i just replicate the cout statement 3 times, so it's now

cout << "z POINTER IS " << dic.letters[3]->letters[25] << endl;
cout << "z POINTER IS " << dic.letters[3]->letters[25] << endl;
cout << "z POINTER IS " << dic.letters[3]->letters[25] << endl;
cout << "z POINTER IS " << dic.letters[3]->letters[25] << endl;

and the printed result when i run the code is

0 (the expected NULL, at first)
0x7f7bf8b29301
0x7f7bf8b29301
0x7f7bf8b29301

... but there's no other code running/changed made between the first
cout and the other 3 cout...

does anyone know how this can be happening??? I'm very perplexed. It
looks to me like there's alot of things going on behind the scenes
that I am not understanding...

[Jeremy Roman]

You may want to try checking your memory allocation -- it's possible
that you're using memory that you never allocated, or have since freed,
which is being reused.

Post by THOM BOHK
I'm trying to debug the insert function in my spellcheck, and I'm
coming across some strange behaviour when I ask for adresses
dog
cat
iguana
mouse
parakeet
and I start accessing and printing things on my trie afterwards to see
that everything is where it should be. it appears somehow that a z is
making it into the trie. after inserting dog i go
cout<< "d's z POINTER IS "<< dic.letters[3]->letters[25]<< endl;
and when i run the code it prints 0, for NULL, which it should.
after inserting the rest of the words, i ask again
cout<< "z POINTER IS "<< dic.letters[3]->letters[25]<< endl;
and i get
0x7fffb54cd390
strange.
so back in my code where I look for the pointer to z from the d node,
i just replicate the cout statement 3 times, so it's now
cout<< "z POINTER IS "<< dic.letters[3]->letters[25]<< endl;
cout<< "z POINTER IS "<< dic.letters[3]->letters[25]<< endl;
cout<< "z POINTER IS "<< dic.letters[3]->letters[25]<< endl;
cout<< "z POINTER IS "<< dic.letters[3]->letters[25]<< endl;
and the printed result when i run the code is
0 (the expected NULL, at first)
0x7f7bf8b29301
0x7f7bf8b29301
0x7f7bf8b29301
... but there's no other code running/changed made between the first
cout and the other 3 cout...
does anyone know how this can be happening??? I'm very perplexed. It
looks to me like there's alot of things going on behind the scenes
that I am not understanding...