Is char s[3] = "abc" legal?

[LarryChen]

I tried to compile it in VC++ 6.0, there is a compiler error. But a string could be terminated without '\0', couldn't it? Thanks.

[Speedo]

"abc" is 4 characters. 'a', 'b', 'c', '\0'.

[LarryChen]

"abc" is 4 characters. 'a', 'b', 'c', '\0'.

I wonder if it is possible for "abc" is terminated without '\0'?

[Russco]

char s[3] = { 'a','b','c' };

Is one way of accomplishing that.

[LarryChen]

char s[3] = { 'a','b','c' };

Is one way of accomplishing that.

That is cool. Any other way? Thanks.

[jnmacd]

char s[3];
memcpy(s, "ABC", 3);

This is asking for trouble unless you know what you are doing...

[S_M_A]

No char s[3] = "abc" is not legal since "abc" is a const char* (or at least considered as const).

[superbonzo]

No char s[3] = "abc" is not legal since "abc" is a const char* (or at least considered as const).

the problem is not the fact that "abc" is a const literal; you can initialize fixed size char arrays with a const literal; the problem is that the to be initialized array must have sufficient characters to store the literal, including the null terminator;

for example, "char s[3] = "abc";" does not compile, but "char s[4] = "abc";", "char s[5] = "abc";", ... does compile and it's legal.

[S_M_A]

Eh, totally messed this up in my head...
Have lately changed a lot of legacy code due to deprecated warnings about char* being assigned with string literals. Seems like that has gotten to me worse than I thought...

[Feoggou]

I tried to compile it in VC++ 6.0, there is a compiler error. But a string could be terminated without '\0', couldn't it? Thanks.

why aren't you just writing:

char s[] = "abc";

?

but if you really don't want to waste that one byte (which is the '\0' character) you can also write like this:

char s[3];
s[0] = 'a';
s[1] = 'b';
s[2] = 'c';

it's pretty the same way as what Russco said ( char s[3] = { 'a','b','c' }; ) only that by the method I've shown you write a bit more.

[Speedo]

I wonder if it is possible for "abc" is terminated without '\0'?

Sure it's possible. But why would you want to? The concept of c-style strings revolves around them being null-terminated. The only time I can think of when you might even think about doing it is in the internals of a string class. In pretty much any other circumstance, you're just making more work for yourself.

[ninja9578]

Eh, totally messed this up in my head...
Have lately changed a lot of legacy code due to deprecated warnings about char* being assigned with string literals. Seems like that has gotten to me worse than I thought...

We've all done that, I still have some legacy code which does that.

[laserlight]

Well, in C, this is valid:

char s[3] = "abc";

being equivalent to:

char s[3] = {'a', 'b', 'c'};

But I don't consider it advisable since readers may ask if it is valid.