Thread: Creating a Pointer to a Structure

I got back from Prelude's corner reviewing his tutorials on "Pointers" and another one on "Structures." I am still stumped on a problem - I'm using the exact statements and format found in Sams "Teach yourself C in 21 days...6th edition" on the section dealing with structures.

I'm using MS VS 2010, which may be part of the problem. Please only address the problem at hand - I could care less if the code below creates local or global variables, etc. I have not completed main() because of an earlier problem.

Here's my simple code:

Code:

// dummy test area to test small snips of C code.   
// 8/9/10
//

#include <stdio.h>

struct Part		// define a simple structure
{
	short number;
	char name[10];
};

struct Part *p_part; 	// declare a pointer to type part
struct Part gizmo;	// declare an instance of type part

p_part = &gizmo;        // now initialize the pointer


int main(void)
{

(*p_part).number = 100;


 return 0; 
}

And here is the offending statement per my compiler:

Code:

p_part = &gizmo;    // now initialize the pointer

I'm getting "Error: this declaration has no storage class or type specifier."

Grrrr.....

If it needed a storage class of type specifier, the book should have told me
to use one.

Thanks for any help!

Try moving this into main:

Code:

p_part = &gizmo;        // now initialize the pointer

Thank you very much kermit and C_nutra.

I learned something new; you can initialize variables outside of main(), but I cannot make an assignment statement. From a beginner's view, this point is subtle. But it's starting to make sense. I compiled the code with the correction & all is well.

You guys are awesome! :-)

Hi Elysia, Yes I knew that and that was how I ultimately printed out the structure's data. A few pages later in this book states: "If str is a structure, p_str is a pointer to str, and memb is a member of str, then one can access str.memb by writing p_str -> memb"

also it says the following 3 expressions will print out the same data:

Code:

str.memb

(*p_str).memb

p_str -> memb

Thanks for your help!