String literals & character arrays

[wintry rain]

Why does this work int buffer[] = {'a', 'v', 'q'} but this won't int buffer[] = "hello", even tho string literal is literally a null terminated char array?

[swift egret]

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[wintry rain]

I think it's the extra conversion step that C won't do to convert string literals to char arrays, and then characters to ASCII equivalents when assigning to an integer array.

[robust umbra]

Char literals are actually ints

But it's not that relevant

[dreamy smelt]

because the types are fundamentally different. string literals are char arrays, you can't use it to initialize an array of different type

[wintry rain]

but this works {'a', 'v', 'q'} ?

[dreamy smelt]

because that's an initializer for an int array

those character literals have type int

[wintry rain]

oh

that makes sense

so this won't work right?

char buffer[] = {'a', 'b'};
int bugger[] = buffer;

I mean this is what I'm essentially trying to do with the string literal except it has a null character at the end

[dreamy smelt]

no, you can't assign into an array like that

buffer isn't a valid initializer

[dreamy smelt]

string literals already have null terminators

[wintry rain]

yes

!solved