将字符串文字分配给char []如何工作？

Question

The C book I'm working through says that string literals are constants, but when I assign them to character arrays, individual characters can be assigned new values. Are the string literals converted into something else during assignment? Are they not inherently constant?

Reading through some other StackOverflow answers, some say that this should result in errors, so I can't figure out why it's working.

Running

char string[12] = "hello world";
string[5] = '-';
printf(string);

Prints hello-world .

Running

"hello world"[5] = '-';

Results in an error error: assignment of read-only location '"hello world"[5]' during compilation.

Answer 1

Typically, a string literal is stored in read-only memory; but, when you initialize a string literal to a character array, as in your first example, it gets copied into the character array, which is not in read-only memory. It is the character array that can be modified; not the literal itself.