malloc显示红线

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2012 and using C for programming. I see that there is no compilation or runtime error(I can give input and output can be displayed) but a red line appear and when I hover on red line it show me an error: error a value of type void * cannot be used to initialize an entity of type "Student*"

Here is my code:

    typedef struct{
            char* firstName;
            char* lastName;
            int day;
            int month;
            int year;

        }STUDENT;

        int numStudents=3;
        int x;
    // Here it show red line, when I hover on it, it show me message
    // 
        STUDENT* students = malloc(numStudents * sizeof *students); // Here it show red line
        for (x = 0; x < numStudents; x++){
            students[x].firstName=(char*)malloc(sizeof(char*));
            scanf("%s",students[x].firstName);
            students[x].lastName=(char*)malloc(sizeof(char*));
            scanf("%s",students[x].lastName);
            scanf("%d",&students[x].day);
            scanf("%d",&students[x].month);
            scanf("%d",&students[x].year);
        }
for (x = 0; x < numStudents; x++)
        printf("first name: %s, surname: %s, day: %d, month: %d, year: %d\n",students[x].firstName,students[x].lastName,students[x].day,students[x].month,students[x].year);

Please let me know why it happens so, if there is error then it should not compile or run!!!

Thank you for help in advance!

Answer 1

You are probably compiling as C++, and in it it is mandatory to cast a void pointer, while in C it isn't.

Tell Visual Studio to compile as C, or cast the result of malloc.