Segmentation fault Binary Tree

I'm trying to learn some C and I started by implementing a binary tree.

The first thing I'm trying is to insert into the tree. However, I'm getting a segmentation fault and I can't figure out why.

The segmentation fault happens when I try to set the *tree parameter to a new node with the passed in value. I tried using free(*tree) first but that doesn't really help.

From what I understand I have a pointer to the pointer of my tree. So I should update the pointer that is being pointed to (if this makes sense?). createNode(val) returns a pointer to a node. So I figure I can simply put that pointer in place of the 'pointee'. So I have a pointer to a new pointer, which was intially NULL.

I'm aware that I don't really get how pointers really work at this point, but that's why I'm trying.. #include #include #include

typedef struct node {
    int val;
    struct node * left;
    struct node * right;
}node;

node * createNode(int val)
{
    node * n = malloc(sizeof(node));
    n->val = val;
    n->left = NULL;
    n->right = NULL;

    return n;
}
node * createTree()
{
    node * root = malloc(sizeof(node));
    root->val = 12;
    root->left = createNode(10);
    root->right = createNode(14);

    root->left->left = createNode(8);
    root->left->right = createNode(9);

    root->right->left = createNode(13);
    root->right->right = createNode(16);

    return root;
}
void insertInTree(node ** tree, int val)
{
    printf("%i\n", (*tree)->val);

    if((*tree) == NULL)
    {
        free(*tree);
        *tree = createNode(val);
    }
    else
    {
        if((*tree)->val > val)
        {
            insertInTree(&(*tree)->left, val);
        }
        else
        {
            if((*tree)->val < val)
            {
                insertInTree(&(*tree)->right, val);
            }
        }
    }   
}

main()
{
   node * tree = createTree();
   insertInTree(&tree, 5);
   getchar();

}