In C, why can't I assign a string to a char array after it's declared?

Question

This has been bugging me for a while.

struct person {
       char name[15];
       int age;
};
struct person me;
me.name = "nikol";

when I compile I get this error:

error: incompatible types when assigning to type ‘char[15]’ from type ‘char *’

am I missing something obvious here?

Answer 1

Arrays are second-class citizens in C, they do not support assignment.

char x[] = "This is initialization, not assignment, thus ok.";

This does not work:

x = "Compilation-error here, tried to assign to an array.";

Use library-functions or manually copy every element for itself:

#include <string.h>
strcpy(x, "The library-solution to string-assignment.");

Answer 2

me.name = "nikol"; is wrong !! you need to use strcpy()

when you do x = "Some String", actually you are putting the starting address of the static string "Some String" into variable x. In your case, name is a static array, and you cannot change the address. What you need, is to copy your string to the already allocated array name. For that, use strcpy().