Question

I have a set of structs, defined as follows:

typedef struct
{
    int index;
    int array[10];
}
Item;

typedef struct
{
    Item A;
    Item B;
    Item C;
}
Collection;

And I want to declare a variable of type Collection as follows:

Collection collection =
{
    { 1, 0 },  /* item A */
    { 2, 0 },  /* item B */
    { 3, 0 }   /* item C */
};

Will this set the three index variables to 1, 2, and 3, while at the same time initializing all three array[] variables with zero?

It appears to be working on my compiler, but I would like to know if this is the standard behaviour.

Answer 1

This is standards compliant. See the section — 6.7.8 Initialization. Further, you can use designated initializers in C99 conforming compilers.