Initialization of C array at time other than declaration?

Question

I know in C that I can do the following.

int test[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};

Now this is only legal when declaring the array. However I was wond

Answer 1

The reason for that at the surface is that arrays are almost everywhere converted to a pointer to the first element. If you have two arrays

double A[5];
double B[5];

in an expression such as

A = B;

both are already converted to pointers. The A on the left is in particular not an "lvalue" so you can't assign to it.

This sounds like a lame excuse, but my guess is that historically it just happened like that. C (and C++ with it) was trapped in an early syntax choice and if you want to stay compatible with legacy code there is probably not much way out of it.