Question

I’m new to C. The string assignment in the following code works:

#include<stdio.h>
int main(void){
  char str[] = "string";
  printf("%s\n",str);
}

But doesn’t work in the following,even I give the index number to the name[]:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void){
  struct student {
    char name[10];
    int  salary;
  };
  struct student a;
  a.name[10] = "Markson";
  a.salary = 100;
  printf("the name is %s\n",a.name);
  return 0;
}

Why does this happen?

Answer 1

You can’t assign to an array. Two solutions: either copy the string:

strcpy(a.name, "Markson");

or use a const char pointer instead of an array and then you can simply assign it:

struct {
    const char *name;
    /* etc. */
};

a.name = "Markson";

Or use a non-const char pointer if you wish to modify the contents of “name” later:

struct {
    char *name;
}

a.name = strdup("Markson");

(Don’t forget to free the memory allocated by strdup() in this latter case!)