The type of a string literal is array of char, and like other arrays, they decay to pointers to the first element when used in expression context, with three ex

The type of a string literal is array of char, and like other arrays, they decay to pointers to the first element when used in expression context, with three exceptions: sizeof, taking the address with &, and when used as a string initializer. "test2" in your example is not a const char *, it's an initializer, since this is one of the exceptions to array-to-pointer decay. http://c-faq.com/aryptr/aryptrequiv.html http://c-faq.com/aryptr/aryptrequiv.html http://c-faq.com/decl/strlitinit.html http://c-faq.com/decl/strlitinit.html