I suspect you are using an uninitialised variable somewhere. That or you have memory corruption. Can you post code, or is the project too big? Best to find the source of this bug now if it is an uninitialised variable or memory corruption, otherwise it''s liable to pop up again later on, when you''re project is twice as big.

Enigma

Memory corruption occurs as a result of buffer under/overflows or writing to bad pointers. Basically it means you''re writing to an area of memory that you shouldn''t be. It can be very difficult to track down. A good debugger will help you, but I don''t know of any easy way to find the source of the problem otherwise, especially when the project is already so big.

If you don''t have a debugger then try reducing your program to a minium and make it output pointer and array index values at every step. Gradually add code back into the project once you are sure there are no problems with the part that you are testing. Alternatively retrofit your code with checked pointers and arrays (this can take a very long time to do) which will alert you to a bad pointer access or array index out of bounds error.

The best way to avoid making such errors in the first place is to change your programming style. Use references where ever possible instead of pointers and use std::deque or another checked container class instead of raw arrays. 99% of the time standard containers will be more than fast enough (they can even be faster than raw arrays) and for the cases where they aren''t you can go back and change them when you''re sure that everything is working properly.

Enigma