character arrays in C

jamesbon · 11-03-2010, 12:56 PM

I was reading Kernighan Ritchie book chapter 4 which deals with character pointers.
I am not able to understand following different type of declarations

Code:

char aname[][15] = { "Illegal month", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar" };
char amessage[] = "now is the time"; 
char *name[] = { "Illegal month", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar" };

What is the difference between these three?

widapol · 11-03-2010, 01:58 PM

First line, you will have an array of strings, length of each strings should be not larger than 15 characters, and the constants will be assigned to aname[0], aname[1],aname[2], aname[3] string respectively.
Second line, you will have a string.
Third line, you will have pointer of string, somewhat equivalent to an array of strings.
For more about difference between string array and pointer. Check this out.