C String Literals and Pointers Assignment

Question

I was looking at tutorials for C and pointers on the internet and found a debugging example and am wondering how to fix this block of code? I have been looking for a while and can't find out how to make it work. I want to replace the 'i' in "Harris" with an "a".

char * ptr = (char *) "Harris";

ptr[4]="a";

String Literals CANNOT be modified (except on ancient hardware not relevant here) You can use a *compound literal* `char *ptr = (char[]){ "Harris" };` (C99+) — David C. Rankin, Mar 20 '19 at 00:17

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 20 '19 at 00:20

3

While you can assign a constant to a char pointer, you can't normally write to it. Fix your code:

char ptr []= "Harris";

For not-your-legacy code use -fwritable-strings.

answered Mar 20 '19 at 00:20

Joshua

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So I broke my own rule about answer and close because on reload after answer someone found a dupe target. – Joshua Mar 20 '19 at 00:24
There are only about 100 on the topic `:)` – David C. Rankin Mar 20 '19 at 00:24

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '19 at 00:18

2

ptr[4]='a';

Single quotes for character constants.

answered Mar 20 '19 at 00:18

shrewmouse

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Which will buy a SegFault in this case. (but your note on quotes is correct). – David C. Rankin Mar 20 '19 at 00:19
So, a strdup then. Hard to answer these on a phone waiting for Chinese takeout. – shrewmouse Mar 20 '19 at 00:24

C String Literals and Pointers Assignment

2 Answers2