How to declare strings in C

This link should satisfy your curiosity.

Basically (forgetting your third example which is bad), the different between 1 and 2 is that 1 allocates space for a pointer to the array.

But in the code, you can manipulate them as pointers all the same -- only thing, you cannot reallocate the second.

Strings in C are represented as arrays of characters.

char *p = "String";

You are declaring a pointer that points to a string stored some where in your program (modifying this string is undefined behavior) according to the C programming language 2 ed.

char p2[] = "String";

You are declaring an array of char initialized with the string "String" leaving to the compiler the job to count the size of the array.

char p3[5] = "String";

You are declaring an array of size 5 and initializing it with "String". This is an error be cause "String" don't fit in 5 elements.

char p3[7] = "String"; is the correct declaration ('\0' is the terminating character in c strings).

http://c-faq.com/~scs/cclass/notes/sx8.html