Why am I getting this error: “data definition has no type or storage class”?

Question

#include 
#include 

struct NODE {
    char* name;
    int val;
    struct NODE* next;
};
typedef struct NODE Node;

Node *head, *tail;
he         


        

Answer 1

The problem is that you're trying to call malloc when you aren't executing inside of a function. If you wrap that inside a main function, for example:

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    Node *head, *tail;
    head = (Node*) malloc( sizeof( Node ) );
    /* ... do other things ... */
    return 0;
}

… it works just fine. GCC's error is a little cryptic, but the problem is basically that you're trying to initialize a variable with something that isn't a constant, which is impossible outside of a function.