This is not anything you should read into. Passing uninitialized references (pointers) as value arguments is a terrible mistake that can result in all kinds of unusual behavior, though it usually manifests as a simple crash like what you experienced. Also, any better compiler would've smacked you for that, but Lite-C doesn't because it's a bit shite.

And if you don't understand the difference between a normal variable and a pointer, I implore you to read about it and figure it out, not only because pointers are extremely important and useful in their own right, but because the difference between VECTOR and VECTOR*, var and var*, and int and int* is huge and you will run into countless problems if you use them interchangeably like that.