Question

Here is a very simple example of what I am trying to do:

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  char a[2][2][5] = { {"hello", "world"}, {"again", "test1"}};

  a[1] = a[0];

  printf("a[0][0]: %s\n", a[0][0]);
  printf("a[0][1]: %s\n", a[0][1]);
  printf("a[1][0]: %s\n", a[1][0]);
  printf("a[1][1]: %s\n", a[1][1]);
}

I expect it to print:
a[0][0]: hello
a[0][1]: world
a[1][0]: hello
a[1][1]: world

Instead all I get is error: incompatible types in assignment

Answer 1

You cannot assign arrays, you should copy them (using memcpy or memmove)

memcpy(a[1], a[0], sizeof(a[0]));

Also, each of your string is of size 6, not 5 (there is an implicit null terminator).