Thread: [Error] incompatible types in assignment of 'const char [6]' to 'char [80]'

Originally Posted by telmo_d

I can't initialize the string, why is that? It gives the error in the title, but why does it give error? I give it more than enough space to store the string why is it whining?

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>


typedef struct
{
    int phoneNumber;
    char name[80];
}People;

int main()
{
    
    People TeC[2];
    TeC[0].name = "David";
    
}

The last line is an assignment, not an initialization. You should use either strcpy() or strncpy() in order to copy "David" into Tec[0].name

Or you could initialize the array during definition:

Code:

...
People Tec[2] = {
   { 12345, "David"},
   { 67890, "Mark"}
};
...

Originally Posted by telmo_d

So i can't make initializaions, only assignements?

On the contrary, you can initialise arrays (i.e., give them an initial value at the point of definition), but you cannot assign to them (i.e., give them a new value after they have been defined). Adding braces makes no difference to this. What you can do is to assign to their elements (if these are not also arrays), hence the suggestion of strcpy.

Originally Posted by telmo_d

I tried strncpy but what's the advantage of using that one vs strcpy? in strcpy you don't need to say size and it doesn't print the \0

The size parameter is useful to avoid buffer overflow, though strncpy was not designed specifically to be a size limited version of strcpy since it does not always null terminate and then writes "additional" null characters if the source string is smaller in size than the size argument.