Question

I was curious about why this is not allowed in C:

char myarray[4];

myarray = "abc";

And this is allowed:

char myarray[4] = "abc";

I know that in the first case I should use strcpy:

char myarray[4];

strcpy(myarray, "abc");

But why declaration and later initialization is not allowed and declaration and simultaneous initialization is allowed? Does it relate to memory mapping of C programs?

Thanks!

Answer 1

That’s because your first code snippet is not performing initialization, but assignment:

char myarray[4] = "abc";  // Initialization.

myarray = "abc";          // Assignment.

And arrays are not directly assignable in C.

The name myarray actually resolves to the address of its first element (&myarray[0]), which is not an lvalue, and as such cannot be the target of an assignment.