Thread: Are these two string initialization methods same?

No they're not the same.

One is an array, the other is a pointer.

The first declares c to be an array of char, and initialises its content to "Hello". Since the number of elements of c was not explicitly specified, it follows that of the initialiser, i.e., c is an array of six char. The contents of c are modifiable, although of course you cannot assign to c itself since c is an array.

The second declares c to be a pointer to char, then initialises c to point to the first character of the string literal "Hello". Note that this means that the code is likely to be poorly written: c should have been declared as a pointer to const char instead so as to avoid accidentally attempting to modify a string literal, which would result in undefined behaviour. However, you can assign to c itself since c is a non-const pointer.

Originally Posted by gaurav#

I didn't get the meaning of these two lines: 1: " you cannot assign to c itself "

Try to compile and observe the error message:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char c[] = "Hello";
    char d[] = "World";
    c = d;
    printf("%s\n", c);
    return 0;
}

Originally Posted by gaurav#

2: you can assign to c itself since c is a non-const pointer

Compile and run:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char *c = "Hello";
    char d[] = "World";
    c = d;
    printf("%s\n", c);
    return 0;
}