How to initialize a struct in accordance with C programming language standards

Question

I want to initialize a struct element, split in declaration and initialization. This is what I have:

typedef struct MY_TYPE {
  bool flag;
  short int value;         


        

Answer 1

I didn't like any of these answers so I made my own. I don't know if this is ANSI C or not, it's just GCC 4.2.1 in it's default mode. I never can remember the bracketing so I start with a subset of my data and do battle with compiler error messages until it shuts up. Readability is my first priority.

    // in a header:
    typedef unsigned char uchar;

    struct fields {
      uchar num;
      uchar lbl[35];
    };

    // in an actual c file (I have 2 in this case)
    struct fields labels[] = {
      {0,"Package"},
      {1,"Version"},
      {2,"Apport"},
      {3,"Architecture"},
      {4,"Bugs"},
      {5,"Description-md5"},
      {6,"Essential"},
      {7,"Filename"},
      {8,"Ghc-Package"},
      {9,"Gstreamer-Version"},
      {10,"Homepage"},
      {11,"Installed-Size"},
      {12,"MD5sum"},
      {13,"Maintainer"},
      {14,"Modaliases"},
      {15,"Multi-Arch"},
      {16,"Npp-Description"},
      {17,"Npp-File"},
      {18,"Npp-Name"},
      {19,"Origin"}
    };

The data may start life as a tab-delimited file that you search-replace to massage into something else. Yes, this is Debian stuff. So one outside pair of {} (indicating the array), then another pair for each struct inside. With commas between. Putting things in a header isn't strictly necessary, but I've got about 50 items in my struct so I want them in a separate file, both to keep the mess out of my code and so it's easier to replace.