Question

Say I do initialize an array like this:

char a[]="test";

What’s the purpose of this? We know that the content might immediately get changed, as it is not allocated, and thus why would someone initialize the array like this?

Answer 1

To clarify, this code is wrong for the reasons stated by the OP:

char* a;
strcpy(a, "test");

As noted by other responses, the syntax “char a[] = “test”” does not actually do this. The actual effect is more like this:

char a[5];
strcpy(a, "test");

The first statement allocates a fixed-size static character array on the local stack, and the second initializes the data in it. The size is determined from the length of the string literal. Like all stack variables, the array is automatically deallocated on exiting the function scope.