how to assign multiple values into a struct at once?

Question

I can do this on initialization for a struct Foo:

Foo foo =  {bunch, of, things, initialized}; 

but, I can't do this:

Foo foo; foo = {bunch, of, things, initialized}; 

So, two questions:

1. Why can't I do the latter, is the former a special constructor for initialization only?

2. How can I do something similar to the second example, i.e. declare a bunch of variables for a struct in a single line of code after it's already been initialized? I'm trying to avoid having to do this for large structs with many variables:

   Foo foo;  foo.a = 1; foo.b = 2; foo.c = 3; //... ad infinitum 

Answer 1

Try this:

Foo foo; foo = (Foo){bunch, of, things, initialized}; 

This will work if you have a good compiler (e.g. GCC). You might need to turn on C99 mode with --std=gnu99, I'm not sure.