How to initialize an array in the member initializer list

Since you can't initialize (raw) arrays with other arrays or even assign arrays in C++, you basically have two possibilities:

1. The idiomatic C++ way would be to use std::string, and the task becomes trivial:

   class Student{
   public:
       Student(int studentID, const std::string& studentName)
       : id(studentID), name(studentName) {}
   protected:
       std::string name;
       int id;
   };
   

   Then, when needed, you can get the underlying raw char array from name by calling the c_str member function:

   const char* CStringName = name.c_str();
   

2. If you want to use a char array instead, things get more complicated. You can first default-initialize the array and fill it in the constructor body with strcpy:

   class Student{
   public:
       Student(int studentID, const char* studentName)
       : id(studentID) {
           assert(strlen(studentName) < 40); // make sure the given string fits in the array
           strcpy(name, studentName);
       }
   protected:
       char name[40];
       int id;
   };
   

   _{Note that the argument char* studentName is identical to char studentName[40], since you can't pass arrays as parameters by value, which is why the compiler just treats it as a char* pointing to the first char in the array.}