Initialize struct without an assignment?

Question

I could not find an answer to this on the Internet, so here is my question: Can I define a struct instance without assigning it to a local or global variable in C? E.g.:

Answer 1

Yes, you can use compound literals in C99 and later.

return (struct A) { .b = 42 };

You can even point to them:

struct A *a = &(struct A) { .b = 42 };
a->b = 43;

These literals are "better" than string literals in that they are writable. The compiler may pool them if and only if you include const in the literal's type .