C Programming Interview Question:

Array is an lvalue or not?

Submitted by: Administrator

An lvalue was defined as an expression to which a value can be assigned. Is an array an expression to which we can assign a value? The answer to this question is no, because an array is composed of several separate array elements that cannot be treated as a whole for assignment purposes.
The following statement is therefore illegal:
int x[5], y[5]; x = y;
Additionally, you might want to copy the whole array all at once. You can do so using a library function such as the memcpy() function, which is shown here:
memcpy(x, y, sizeof(y));
It should be noted here that unlike arrays, structures can be treated as lvalues. Thus, you can assign one structure variable to another structure variable of the same type, such as this:
typedef struct t_name
{
char last_name[25];
char first_name[15];
char middle_init[2];
} NAME;
...
NAME my_name, your_name;
...
your_name = my_name;
Submitted by: Administrator