"initializer element is not constant char" error in C - c

Question

Here is my code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
char *s = (char *)malloc (40);
int main(void)
{
s="this is a string";
printf("%s",s);
}
I am getting the following error:
error: initializer element is not constant char *s = (char *)malloc
(40);

Answer 1

You don't need to allocate memory in this way if you wanna initialize it in code, I mean:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void)
{
char *s = "this is a string"; // char s[] = "this is a string";
printf("%s",s);
return 0;
}
is just enough in this case. If you really want to assign const char string to your char array, this topic should enlighten you: Dynamically allocating memory for const char string using malloc()

Answer 2

You cannot not do that.
You can do this instead -
#include <stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
char *s; // probably should avoid using global variables
int main(void)
{
s=malloc(40);
strcpy(s,"this is a string");
printf("%s",s);
free(s);
}
Other than this inside main you can do this -
char *s="this is a string"; //string literal you can't modify it
Or
char s[]="this is a string"; // modifiable string

Answer 3

You assign a pointer to a string constant to a variable, s, which is not declared to point to a constant. This is what you want:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
const char *s = "this is a string";
printf("%s\n", s);
return 0;
}
In C there are basically three ways to declare "string" variables.
String constant pointers
If you need a name for a string that will not change, you can declare and initialize it like
const char *s = "a string";
Character arrays
If you need a string variable and you know in advance how long it needs to be you can declare and initialize it like
char s[] = "a string";
or like
char s[9];
strcpy(s, "a string");
Character sequence pointers
If you don't know in advance how large the array needs to be, you can allocate space during program execution:
char *s;
s = malloc(strlen(someString) + 1);
if (s != NULL) {
strcpy(s, someString);
}
The "+1" is to make room for the null character (\0).