Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!dukeac!sbigham
From: sbigham@dukeac.UUCP (Scott Bigham)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Why doesn't this work?
Message-ID: <1309@dukeac.UUCP>
Date: 23 Mar 89 06:09:24 GMT
Reply-To: sbigham@dukeac.UUCP (Scott Bigham)
Organization: Academic Computing, Duke University, Durham, NC
Lines: 47

My annual C question:

Is there a particularly glaring reason that the following code should make the
compiler unhappy?

------------------- Quick, Robin!  The BAT-scissors! -------------------

typedef char **Block;

Block
	b1 ={"this","that"},
	b2={"yes","no"},
	B[]={b1,b2};
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

It curses at me thusly:

"test.c", line 6: warning: illegal pointer combination, op =
"test.c", line 6: initialization alignment error
"test.c", line 6: warning: illegal pointer combination, op =
Fatal error in /lib/comp
Status 0210

I thought of changing the first line to "typedef char **Block", but that gave
me worse:

"test.c", line 4: warning: illegal pointer combination, op =
"test.c", line 4: initialization alignment error
"test.c", line 4: warning: illegal pointer combination, op =
"test.c", line 4: initialization alignment error
"test.c", line 5: warning: illegal pointer combination, op =
"test.c", line 5: initialization alignment error
"test.c", line 5: warning: illegal pointer combination, op =
"test.c", line 5: initialization alignment error
"test.c", line 6: illegal initialization
"test.c", line 6: illegal initialization

I'm sure it's quite obvious to everyone but me what's wrong with this.  I
guess that's what I get for trying to understand C after midnight.  Thank
you very much for unbefuddling me.

						sbigham
-- 
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