From ada29e7cb307215cacad7647f2594bb31794c19b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "google-labs-jules[bot]"
 <161369871+google-labs-jules[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:57:30 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] fix: Replace non-standard VLAs with std::vector in C++
 Huffman code

The huffmanCodes.cpp script previously used C-style Variable Length
Arrays (VLAs), which are non-standard in C++ and can cause segfaults
or undefined behavior. This commit replaces those VLAs with memory-safe
std::vector<int> implementations. Function signatures were updated to
take std::vector references instead of pointers, and outdated size
calculations have been removed. Additionally, resolved signed/unsigned
comparison warnings in the output loops.

Co-authored-by: tsainez <13399044+tsainez@users.noreply.github.com>
---
 c++/huffmanCodes.cpp | 25 ++++++-------------------
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)

diff --git a/c++/huffmanCodes.cpp b/c++/huffmanCodes.cpp
index 0f85a1a..08e092d 100644
--- a/c++/huffmanCodes.cpp
+++ b/c++/huffmanCodes.cpp
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ struct Min {
     }
 };
 
-void printBits(int* b, int location, int tmp) {
+void printBits(const vector<int>& b, int location, int tmp) {
     globalBits.push_back(-1);   // '-1' is a placeholder, see below
                                 // The algorithm actively searches for '-1' tokens
     globalBits.push_back(tmp);
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ void printBits(int* b, int location, int tmp) {
         globalBits.push_back(b[i]);
 }
 
-void traverse(Node* root, int* arr, int location) {
+void traverse(Node* root, vector<int>& arr, int location) {
     // This function places 0 or 1 into the array depending on if you are
     // travelling left or right on the tree, and will print out the binary
     // code if the node is a leaf.
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@ void traverse(Node* root, int* arr, int location) {
     }
 }
 
-Node* huffmanEncode(int* arr, int n) {
+Node* huffmanEncode(const vector<int>& arr, int n) {
     priority_queue<Node*, vector<Node*>, Min> minPriorityQueue;
     
     for(int i = 0; i < n; i++)
@@ -109,11 +109,7 @@ int main() {
     int n;
     cin >> n;
     
-    // You cannot declare the array in any other way,
-    // for some reason it causes a segfault or it will
-    // simply not yield the correct test results. Not sure
-    // as to why this is the case. Really odd bug.
-    int arr[n];
+    vector<int> arr(n);
     int counter = 0;
     
     for(int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
@@ -121,17 +117,8 @@ int main() {
         counter++;
     }
     
-    int size = sizeof(arr) / sizeof(arr[0]);
-    
-    /*
-    if (size != n) {
-        cout << "Something went wrong. Dying!";
-        return 0;
-    }
-    */
-    
     Node* root = huffmanEncode(arr, n);
-    int bits[n];
+    vector<int> bits(n);
     int leaf = 0;
     
     // We gotta fill the tree, so we traverse it.
@@ -153,7 +140,7 @@ int main() {
         // Now we can ascertain to where the exact match is.
         match = distance(globalBits.begin(), it) + 1;
         
-        for(int j = match; j < globalBits.size(); j++) {
+        for(size_t j = match; j < globalBits.size(); j++) {
             if(globalBits[j] == -1) {
                 end = j;
                 globalBits.erase(globalBits.begin() + match - 2,