Assigning next pointer in a structure definition = NULL, throws error

Question

Why this error is being thrown for below code.

Error: error: expected ‘:’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘}’ or ‘__attribute__’ before ‘=’ token
  struct node_s *next=NULL;

Code:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>

typedef struct node_s {
    int data;
    struct node_s *next=NULL;
} node;

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 06 '15 at 15:28

You have to remove the NULL initialization of the pointer. An initialization is only allowed at the declaration.

typedef struct node_s {
     int data;
     struct node_s *next;
}node;

You can do node a = { .next = NULL }; to initialize the pointer during the declaration.

1 Answers1