A struct that contains an array of char arrays

Question

I'm trying to define an instance of a struct, and am having particular trouble with setting this one variable. It's an array of char arrays.

Here is my struct in my header file...

struct widget_t {
    char *name;
    uint8_t numberOfNicknames;
    char *nicknames[];
};

And here's me attempting to set up the instance of the widget_t struct...

widget_t SomeWidget;

void setUpFunction () {
    SomeWidget.name = (char *)"Lawn Mower";
    SomeWidget.numberOfNicknames = 2;
    SomeWidget.nicknames = {
        "Choppie McGrasschopper",
        "Really Noisy"
    };
}

So, the error is happening when I try to put the nicknames into SomeWidget.nicknames. I'm not sure if I need to do something funky like I'm doing with name being a pointer...?

The tricky bit is that the number of nicknames is variable. So each instance will want to set up a different number of them.

Answer 1

One option would be:

struct widget_t {
    char const *name;
    uint8_t numberOfNicknames;
    char const * const *nicknames;
};

static char const *mower_nicknames[] = { "Choppie", "Bob" };
widget_t SomeWidget = { "Lawn Mower", 2, mower_nicknames };

static char const *bus_nicknames[] = { "Wheels", "Go", "Round" };
widget_t OtherWidget = { "Bus", 3, bus_nicknames };

// no setup function needed