Thread: structure members outside main

ive been trying to solve this now for at least 2 hours.

Code:

struct sizes
{
    int e_size;
};

struct sizes headersizes;

headersizes.e_size = sizeof(struct ethhdr);

....
int main...

gcc tells me that there is a parse error before '.'
in this line

Code:

headersizes.e_size = sizeof(struct ethhdr);

why is this happening? cant i declare structure members as globals? or outside of a function?

thanks