I am trying to initalize a structure using braces, but i am really trying to initalize the structure that is pointed to by a pointer returned from a malloc call.
typedef struct foo{
int x;
int y;
} foo;
foo bar = {5,6};
I understand how to do that, but i need to do it in this context.
foo * bar = malloc(sizeof(foo));
*bar = {3,4};
(This was answered in comments, so making it a CW).
You need to cast the right-hand side of the assignment, like so:
*bar = (foo) {3,4};
As pointed out by @cremno in the comment, this isn't a cast but rather an assignment of a compound literal
The relevant section of the C99 standard is: 6.5.2.5 Compound literals which says:
A postfix expression that consists of a parenthesized type name followed by a brace enclosed list of initializers is a compound literal. It provides an unnamed object whose value is given by the initializer list
bar is a pointer that holds reference to the malloced foo struct
Use bar->x=3;bar->y=4