Stupid C question

Richard> Hello, all: OK, here's where my lack of intimate knowledge Richard> of C shows. I'm working on a graphics board add-in for the Richard> Altair32 Emulator. I have 16 of the following declarations, Richard> one for each color supported by the board: Richard> const COLORREF colGray = RGB(128,128,128) ; // 8 That declares a variable (a read-only one) whose initial value is that color. Richard> The RGB macro converts an RGB color value to a different Richard> datatype (a DWORD) for use with various Windows APIs, such Richard> as the one I'm using to draw color boxes. The colors are in Richard> order per the video board docs, so I create an array of Richard> COLORREFs: Richard> static COLORREF colColors[] = {colGray, colMaroon, colNavy, Richard> colPurple, colGreen, colOlive, colTeal, colSilver, colBlack, Richard> colRed, colBlue, colMagenta, colLime, colYellow, colCyan, Richard> colWhite} ; Richard> Now, here's the problem. I get compiler error C2099 on the Richard> declaration of colColors. C2099 translates to "initializer Richard> is not a constant". I'm sure that the solution is something Richard> obvious to the trained eye, but I'm not seeing it. Can Richard> someone identify what I'm missing? Sure. You're telling it to initialize the array with variables. If you want to initialize it with the addresses of those variables, you have to say &foo. If you want to refer to the colors by name in an initializer, you can't do it this way -- use #define instead: #define colGray RGB(128,128,128) // etc. and the rest of the code then works. paul