Question

I have a c file that starts with a struct I am calling stringtable, looks like this

struct stringtable {
   int table[];
   int numElements = 15;
};

And I have a header for it that has this typedef

typedef stringtable *stringtable_ref;

When I compile with gcc I get the errors:
expected identifier or ‘(‘ before ‘[‘ token
expected ‘:’ before ‘int’

like I have declared the struct wrong. I have done structs in C like this before so my question is: Am I making a mistake declaring my struct? Does it need to have a tag before the semicolon? Are there only certain places I am allowed to declare a struct?

Answer 1

struct stringtable {
   int table[];
   int numElements = 15;
};

A flexible array member like int table[]; can only be the last member of a struct (with at least one more member).

And you can’t assign a default value to a member in a struct declaration, C doesn’t support that.