Why array assignment operation doesn't exist but structure assignment does in C language?

Question

int a[10];
int b[10];

a = b; // illegal

typedef struct {
    int real;
    int imag;
    } complex;

complex c,d;
c = d; //legal

[I realize that

Answer 1

For historical info, this may be interesting: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html

In B, declaring an array would set aside memory for the array, just as C does, but the name supplied for the variable was used to define a pointer to the array. Ritchie changed this in C, so that the name "is" the array but can decay to a pointer when used:

The rule, which survives in today's C, is that values of array type are converted, when they appear in expressions, into pointers to the first of the objects making up the array.

This invention enabled most existing B code to continue to work, despite the underlying shift in the language's semantics. The few programs that assigned new values to an array name to adjust its origin—possible in B and BCPL, meaningless in C—were easily repaired.

If at that very early stage, Ritchie had defined a = b to copy the array, then the code he was trying to port from B to C would not have been as easily repaired. As he defined it, that code would give an error, and he could fix it. If he'd made C copy the array, then he would have silently changed the meaning of the code to copy the array rather than reseating the name being used to access an array.

There's still the question, "why hasn't this feature been added in the 40 years since", but I think that's why it wasn't there to start with. It would have been effort to implement, and that effort would actually have made that early version of C worse, in the sense of being slightly harder to port B and BCPL code to C. So of course Ritchie didn't do it.