From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!arf Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: re: C initialization of statics Article-I.D.: eagle.497 Posted: Thu Sep 2 12:26:16 1982 Received: Sun Sep 5 02:34:08 1982 Recall the problem was char *a[] = { "hello" }; char *p[] = { a[0] }; I received a number of comments that basically said a[0] is not an address nor a constant, hence not a legitimate initializer for the static array p. One person noted that the rule for dynamic initialization is, in contrast to static initialization, "any expression provided that all variables in it are defined". So it appears that the right question is why isn't the same rule followed for static initialization as for dynamic?