assignment makes integer from pointer without a cast

Question

In the below code am getting an error while am assigning len1 to array a The error is

assignment makes integer from pointer without a         


        

Answer 1

What are the types of the (sub-)expressions in your statement?

a[4] = len1;

len1 is an array of 50 chars (type char[50]) but in the expression above it decays to a pointer to its first element. That's a value of type char*.
a[4] is an object of type char.

You cannot assign a char* to an object of type char!

I think maybe you wanted

/* BEWARE BUFFER OVERFLOWS */
strcpy(a+4, len1); /* a+4 is of type `char*`, len1 decays to `char*` */

Answer 2

The problem is that a[4] is a char, whereas len1 is an array of chars!

When you declare

char a[7] = {...}

You're saying that you want a to be an array of chars and you're initializing the values at a to the values in {...}.

When you say a[4] you're saying go 4 along from where a is and use the value there, which is a char. But len1 is a char pointer so when you assign it to a[4] you get the warning!