C++ error: cannot convert ‘char (*)[63]’ to ‘char*’ in initialization

Question

I seem to be more of a noob in C++ than I originally thought. As far as my knowledge of C/C++ goes, this should work. I define a character array then try to assign a pointer to the beginning... What am I doing wrong?

// Create character array
char str[] = "t xtd 02 1CF00400 08 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 0   0 1234.567890";
// Assign pointer to beginning of array
char* p = &str;

Answer 1

The type of str is char[63]. For reference, note that the type of the string literal itself is const char[63], not const char *. You take the address of that, which gives you a pointer to char[63], or char (*)[63]. You then try to assign that to a char *.

What you should do is not take the address and let the array decay into a pointer:

char *p = str;

What you should really do, though, is use std::string.

Answer 2

You can simply omit the address operator,

char *p = str;

works, arrays automatically decay into pointers to the first element in that context. Or, if you wish, explicitly cast, but that would be an abomination.