A question regarding strings

Hi,

I've a doubt working with strings. To store a name into a character array, I give like

Code:

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char Temp[]="Array";

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. Here the declaration and the initialization of the array is done in a single step. But what if I want to initialize the array later in my program. Is there any way to do it?

Thanks,
Babu

Since Temp is on the stack you'd still have to specify it's size, then you can copy data into it later.

eg:

Code:

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char Temp[32];

/* ... */
strcpy(Temp, "Hello World");
/* Temp now holds "Hello World" */

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Basically the compiler fills in the empty brackets when you do: char Temp[]="Array";, it See's that 'Temp' only has to be 6 bytes long (Array + NUL)

Code:

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char Temp[]="Array";

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is semantically

Code:

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char const Temp[]="Array";

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What exists in memory is "Array" and 'Temp' is just an alias, NOT a variable per se...

I would LOVE to stand corrected.

Well, Temp is an actual array in this case, and "Array" is copied to it automatically (hence why on systems where string literals are read-only, you can alter these arrays).

Code:

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char *Temp = "Array";

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Code:

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char Temp[] = "Array";

---

Two totally different meanings. One points to the string literal (generally in read-only memory), and one is an actual array that has the string copied to it upon creation.

The first is a pointer variable which on initialization points to the location where "Array" is stored, but can be reassigned to any time....

The second is an array in which "Array" is stored. We MIGHT overwrite that location, but the compiler will definitely not allow us to do that directly.

Am I making sense or am I just plain wrong man?

You're just plain wrong.
But perhaps you should start your own thread rather than hijacking someone elses from several weeks ago.

Quote:

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The second is an array in which "Array" is stored. We MIGHT overwrite that location, but the compiler will definitely not allow us to do that directly.

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Compiler will allows us to overwrite it unless yoy declare it as an const variable. Have a look at this code

Code:

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#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char temp[] = "string";
   
    /* You should be more careful here since it is temp3[6] */
    strcpy(temp,"Test");
   
    printf("&#37;s",temp);
   
    getchar();
    return 0;
}

/* my output
Test
*/

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ssharish2005