Pointers confusion in C
c, character, pointers
Solution
char* name;
declares a pointer but doesn't initialise it to point to memory you have allocated. Attempts to write to it using `scanf` result in undefined behaviour and may well crash.
char* name = "Hello";
declares a pointer and initialises it to point to a string literal. String literals may be stored in read-only memory so you should think of this as having type `const char*`.
So, if you want to assign a string at run-time, neither of these approaches would work. You would instead have to allocate memory for a `char` array then use `scanf` (or `fgets`, `readline`, etc.) to write a string to that memory
char name[20];
scanf("%19s", name);
Problem
i'm new to programming in C, and I've been thinking about this problem for quite some time now: ``` char* name; scanf("%s", name); ``` Why doesn't this work? For example, if I type in "Hello", the program just gives me an error. But isn't the above code the exact same thing as this? ``` char* name = "Hello"; ```