error C2275 error with typedef struct

Question

I have a program I am writing which is a basic image drawing program. It is in C. Initialy i declare ``` typedef struct { int red; int green; int blue; } pixel_colour; ``` I have a function to fill the background which accepts this so I use it like. ``` pixel_colour flood_colour = {80,50,91}; FloodImage(flood_colour); ``` Now this works fine if it is the only thing in my main, but as soon as I add a switch/case and the rest of my code I can no longer use `pixel_colour flood_colour = {80,50,91};` instead getting ``` error C2275: 'pixel_colour' : illegal use of this type as an expression 1> c:\users\xxxx\documents\visual studio 2010\projects\xxx.c(20) : see declaration of 'pixel_colour' ``` The main code is below, it works fine with all my functions until i try to use pixel_colour, It will be set to variable rather than 200,200,200 but even that does not work ``` char instring[80] = "FL 201 3 56"; int pst = FirstTwo(instring); switch( pst ) { case 1: printf( "FL "); CaseFL(instring); pi…

Accepted Answer

In C89, as supported by MSVC, you can declare a variable only at the beginning of a code block. Instead you can do:

```
case 1: 
{
    // first thing in the block - variable declaration / initialization
    pixel_colour flood_colour = {200,200,200};
    printf( "FL ");
    CaseFL(instring);
    FloodImage(flood_colour);
    break;
}
```

C99, C11 and C++ all allow variables to be declared as needed.

error C2275 error with typedef struct

Solution

Problem