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Can anybody please give me a list of more toughest C programs. ?

Edited by deceptikon because: Moved. Please note that we have a C forum.
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For : a compact, practical pack of advanced pointer problems, a couple of classic pointer bugs with fixes, and a debugging checklist. 's point about scope is useful — isolate a single pointer concept (ownership, aliasing, lifetime) per exercise before combining them. 's suggestion to practise algorithmic problems is complementary; the exercises below focus on implementation, undefined behavior, and debugging instead.

  • Implement a generic intrusive doubly linked list with safe iteration during node removal and an iterator that remains valid across splices (tests must exercise corner cases).
  • Build a resizable vector that preserves iterator validity where possible and document when iterators become invalid; include realloc failure handling.
  • Write a small memory-pool allocator with free-list coalescing and alignment guarantees; add a debug mode that catches double-free and cross-boundary frees.
  • Implement a safe string library (bounded join/split/concat) that never overflows buffers and exposes clear ownership semantics.
  • Create a tiny interpreter where operations are stored as function pointers; add a plugin API that loads handlers at runtime (exercise in casting and ABI discipline).
  • Implement persistent append-only logs with mmap-backed pages; test recovery after partial writes and pointer validity after remapping.

Classic pointer bug (returning pointer to stack) — wrong and two fixes:

char *bad() {
    char buf[64];
    strcpy(buf, "hello");
    return buf;   /* returns address of local stack memory */
}

Fix 1 — caller-allocated buffer:

void good_caller(char *out, size_t n) {
    strncpy(out, "hello", n-1);
    out[n-1] = '\0';
}

Fix 2 — heap allocation (caller must free):

char *good_alloc() {
    char *p = malloc(6);
    if (!p) return NULL;
    strcpy(p, "hello");
    return p;
}

Minimal debugging checklist: reproduce and shrink the test case; compile with high warnings (-Wall -Wextra -Wshadow) and debug info; use AddressSanitizer (-fsanitize=address,undefined -g) and Valgrind to find leaks and invalid accesses; run under gdb to inspect lifetimes; add unit tests that exercise edge cases. For reading on pitfalls and patterns, consult classic texts such as "C Traps and Pitfalls" (Koenig), "Expert C Programming" (van der Linden), and K&R; prefer legitimate publisher or library PDFs rather than unofficial copies.

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Member Avatar for L7Sqr

I'm not sure I understand your question. Do you want programs that are written in C and are of substantial size? Or, do you want problems that are hard to solve so that you may practice developing C programs?

Member Avatar for killer88

i need problems for solving. :) i need plenty of questions to work out. i would be happy if u could give . thanks pal.

Member Avatar for sepp2k

Can you be more specific about what kinds of problems you're looking for in terms of scope and "topic" (like should they be more about algorithms or application design etc.) and how tough they should be?

If you're interested in algorithmic problems, you can find ones of various difficulties on sites like the Spehere Online Judge or the UVA Online Judge. If you're interested in mathematical problems (with programatic solutions), Project Euler has many nice ones (though most of them are pretty tough and generally require more mathematical than programming knowledge).

Member Avatar for killer88

complex problems related to pointers ?

Member Avatar for killer88

Could somebody please help to find out some pdf books explaining the different ways of committing errors in c. starting from syntax error to error with incorret usage of loops and so on.

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