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At compile time, string literals are used to create an array of static storage duration of sufficient length to contain the character sequence and a terminating null character. It is unspecified whether these arrays of string literals are distinct from each other. The behavior is undefined if a program attempts to modify any string literals. Modifying a string literal frequently results in an access violation because string literals are typically stored in read-only memory. See also undefined behavior 33  of Annex J of the C Standard.

String literals are usually referred to via a pointer to, or array of characters. Ideally they should be assigned only to pointers to (or arrays of) const char.

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As an array initializer, a string literal specifies the initial values of characters in an array as well as the size of the array. (See STR36 STR11-C. Do not specify the bound of a character array initialized with a string literal.) This code creates a copy of the string literal in the space allocated to the character array a. The string stored in a can be safely modified.

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