Possible to initialize an array after the declaration in C?

c variable-declaration

RyJ · Jan 16, 2012 · Viewed 28.2k times · Source

Is there a way to declare a variable like this before actually initializing it?

    CGFloat components[8] = {
        0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0,
        0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.15
    };

I'd like it declared something like this (except this doesn't work):

    CGFloat components[8];
    components[8] = {
        0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0,
        0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.15
    };

Answer

You cannot assign to arrays so basically you cannot do what you propose but in C99 you can do this:

CGFloat *components;
components = (CGFloat [8]) {
    0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0,
    0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.15
};

the ( ){ } operator is called the compound literal operator. It is a C99 feature.

Note that in this example components is declared as a pointer and not as an array.