Question

So, arrays are pointers to their first element.

float color[4]={rColor, gColor, bColor, alpha};

Thus, just plain color points to &color[0];

Now suppose I have a struct thusly:

struct Colors{
float color[4];
};

Now I have found I can do this quite fine:

Colors myColor={{*color}};

I could also just do this:

Colors myColor={{color[0]}};

I am only pointing at one element, but the struct expects 4, so it keeps looking past this element.

First, I want to check that is fine to do, legal and okay. Obviously if you are passing a large array, this is quite convenient on the syntax and typing.

Second, I want to verify the reasoning about why this works. Since color alone is a pointer, the * is an indirection operator that retrieves the memory pointed to, thus, the array. So essentially we get the entire array by just calling its pointer with indirection. Correct?

Answer 1

Intializers of structures, unions and arrays have the particular property that elements that are omitted from it are initialized with 0.

To initialize a whole structure as your Colors you can also use any other object of that same type.