Question

I was just going through certain interview questions. Got this structure related issue, I m not understanding what is happening wit the output, Please if some could explain the reason.

When is use a character pointer in the structure like

#include <stdio.h>

struct name {
    char *array;
}variable;

int main( int argc, char * argv[] ){

    variable.array="hello";
    printf( "%s\n", variable.array );
}

The output is hello printed, but when change the structure variable to

struct name {
    char array[10];
}variable;

The compiler throws an error “incompatible types in assignment” at

variable.array="hello";

I am really confused as to where i am missing the point. Why does it show the error like assignment problem?? Please correct me
Thank you

Answer 1

You can only initialize array like that at the time of declaration only,
else you need to use

strcpy(variable.array,"hello");

you can’t even do like that with a simple char array

char a[10];

a="hello";

the complier will tell :

incompatible types when assigning to type ‘char[10]’ from type ‘char *’

because "hello" is a string literal that is being held by a pointer which can’t be assigned like this to an array.