Can't initialize char array to a variable in c

Question

While using Turbo c++ initializing array of char variable getting error code as follows

int gd=DETECT,gm,i,d=0,x,y;
char s[12]={"3","4","5","6","7","8","9","10","11","12","1","2","\0"};
initgraph(&gd,&gm,"..\\BGI");

but while used to initialize s[12][3] , the initializer list works fine!

Answer 1

There is a difference between "3" and '3' .

• "3" is a string literal
• '3' is a character constant (to nitpick: integer character constant)

here, to initialize an array of char type, you seem to need (brace-enclosed) list of character constants, not strings.

but while using s[12][3] works fine

Well, there you're initializing arrays .

Moral of the story: When in doubt, check the data types!!

Answer 2

You are trying to store char s, not strings, so why do you use double quotes?

"a" is a string, 'a' is a character.

What you actually want to store is strings, and for that you need a 2D array, like this:

s[12][3] = {"3","4","5","6","7","8","9","10","11","12","1","2"};

You cannot express 10 as a single character, I mean '10' does not exist. Single characters are from 0 to 9 when it comes to digits. For that reason, you need a string for 10, like this "10" .

Now, you need the second dimension of your array to be 3, because the string "10" (for example) is a null-terminated string, thus 2 characters for its actual contents, plus one for the null-terminator, gives as 3.

---

PS: Turbo-C++ is an ancient compiler. Upgrade to GCC or anything else, really.

Answer 3

You need to change:

char s[12]={"3","4","5","6","7","8","9","10","11","12","1","2","\0"};

to

char s[13]={'3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10','11','12','1','2','\0'};

As char array elements should be char literals not string literals