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From: john@dynasoft.UUCP (John Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: C question
Message-ID: <1989Dec18.124934.1487@stag.UUCP>
Date: 18 Dec 89 12:49:34 GMT
Sender: daemon@stag.UUCP (The devil himself)
Organization: Mindtools ST Access Group
Lines: 42

[S61304@PRIME-A.POLY-SOUTH-WEST.AC.UK (Rat) writes...]

> Why wont Sozobon, Lattice or any other C compiler I've tried compile the
> following, from K&R?
> 
> main()
>      $
>      char fred[] = "Some string constant";
>      <rest of routine>
>      
> 
> This has been confusing me for a while, as K&R (surely correct!) would
> seem to indicate that this is indeed permissible!

 (Assuming that the '$' character in the line after main() is really
suppost to be a '{' character on your machine and just got garbled...??)

  Can you please tell me where in K&R this example is used?

  The problem is because you can't assign a string to an unknown size
array at runtime (at least not that way)...  The array you give there
needs to be defined with:

	static char fred[] = "Some string constant";

  Defining the array as static tells the compiler you want the array to
be created-and-initialized, as-shown, at compile-time.

  To assign the array at runtime, you've got a number of options, but the
easiest way is:

	main()
		{
		char fred[22];

		strcpy(fred, "Some string constant");
		<rest of routine>
		}

---
John Stanley <dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP>
Software Consultant / Dynasoft Systems