word is of type char*, a pointer to a (single) object of type char. The initializer means that the char object it points to happens to be the first (0th) eleme

word is of type char*, a pointer to a (single) object of type char. The initializer means that the char object it points to happens to be the first (0th) element of an array containing 4 elements with values 'x', 'y', 'z', and '\0'. Most manipulation of arrays in C is done via pointers to the individual elements, and arithmetic on those pointers. (Incrementing a pointer value yields a pointer to the next element in the array.) For example, `sizeof word` gives you the size of the pointer object, but `strlen(word)` yields 3, because it calls a library function that performs pointer arithmetic to find the trailing '\0' that marks the end of the string. (A "string" in C is a data layout, not a data type.)