Question

Why does

char line[10] = "1234";

work fine but

char line[10];
line = "1234";

throws an

error: incompatible types in assignment

error?

Answer 1

The first line works because it performs an initialization of the char array with data. It would be the same as:

char line[10] = {'1', '2', '3', '4', '\0'};

In the second example, the type of "1234" is const char*, since it is a pointer to a constant char array. You’re trying to assign a const char* to a char*, which is illegal. The correct way to assign a constant (or other) string to a string variable is to use strcpy, strncpy, or any other string handling function.