Why are string literals l-value while all other literals are r-value?

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A string literal is a literal with array type, and in C there is no way for an array type to exist in an expression except as an lvalue. String literals could have been specified to have pointer type (rather than array type that usually decays to a pointer) pointing to the string “contents”, but this would make them rather less useful; in particular, the sizeof operator could not be applied to them.

Note that C99 introduced compound literals, which are also lvalues, so having a literal be an lvalue is no longer a special exception; it’s closer to being the norm.

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