Interestingly enough, it is possible to initialize arrays in any way at any time in the program, provided they are members of a struct or union.
Example program:
#include <stdio.h>
struct ccont
{
char array[32];
};
struct icont
{
int array[32];
};
int main()
{
int cnt;
char carray[32] = { 'A', 66, 6*11+1 }; // 'A', 'B', 'C', '\0', '\0', ...
int iarray[32] = { 67, 42, 25 };
struct ccont cc = { 0 };
struct icont ic = { 0 };
/* these don't work
carray = { [0]=1 }; // expected expression before '{' token
carray = { [0 ... 31]=1 }; // (likewise)
carray = (char[32]){ [0]=3 }; // incompatible types when assigning to type 'char[32]' from type 'char *'
iarray = (int[32]){ 1 }; // (likewise, but s/char/int/g)
*/
// but these perfectly work...
cc = (struct ccont){ .array='a' }; // 'a', '\0', '\0', '\0', ...
// the following is a gcc extension,
cc = (struct ccont){ .array={ [0 ... 2]='a' } }; // 'a', 'a', 'a', '\0', '\0', ...
ic = (struct icont){ .array={ 42,67 } }; // 42, 67, 0, 0, 0, ...
// index ranges can overlap, the latter override the former
// (no compiler warning with -Wall -Wextra)
ic = (struct icont){ .array={ [0 ... 1]=42, [1 ... 2]=67 } }; // 42, 67, 67, 0, 0, ...
for (cnt=0; cnt<5; cnt++)
printf("%2d %c %2d %c\n",iarray[cnt], carray[cnt],ic.array[cnt],cc.array[cnt]);
return 0;
}