Given a struct Element:
typedef struct {
char someString[9]
int value;
} Element
and an array elementList:
Element elementList[5];
is there an easy way to dynamically add an Element to each index of the list? I have tried creating a function add_element that takes in the list and modifies it there but I'd prefer something equivalent to Java's elementList[i] = new Element.
There's no need, that array consists of structure instances.
You can do e.g.:
strcpy(elementList[0].someString, "foo");
elementList[0].value = 4711;
This is not possible in Java, where everything is a reference, but in C you can do this. If you want a bunch of NULL-able references, in C you use pointers:
Element *elementList[5]; /* An array of 5 pointers to type Element. */
Then you have to use e.g. heap allocations to make sure there is memory before accessing the Element:
elementList[0] = malloc(sizeof *elementList[0]); /* This might fail! */
elementList[0]->value = 17;
As declared, you've created a 5-element array of Element instances; there's no need to allocate new Element objects. You can go ahead and read/assign each member of each element:
element[i].value = some_value();
strcpy( element[i].someString, some_string() );
If you want to emulate the Java method, you'd do something like the following:
Element *elementList[5]; // create elementList as an array of *pointers* to Element
...
elementList[i] = malloc( sizeof *elementList[i] ); // dynamically allocate each element
Note that in this case, you'd use the -> operator instead of the . operator to access each Element member, since each elementList[i] is a pointer to Element, not an Element instance:
elementList[i]->value = some_value();
strcpy( elementList[i]->someString, some_string() );
In either case, the array size is fixed; you cannot grow or shrink the number of elements in the array.
elementList[1]can be addressed directly (although it may contain rubbish unless you initialize it...)