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I have tried a few different things to get this to work but basically I have a name that is 6 letters long (maximum) and I need to input it into the char* car in place of the '-'. For example if the name was Bob the car should look like ~O=Bob----o>

typedef struct Racer_S 

 int row; ///< vertical row or "racing lane" of a racer

 int distance; ///< column of rear of car, marking its position in race

 char *graphic; ///< graphic is the drawable text of the racer figure

 Racer;

Racer * make_racer( char *name, int row )
 Racer *newRacer;
 char *car = "~O=-------o>";
 for (int i = 0; i < strlen(name); ++i)
 car[i+3] = name[i];
 // printf("%sn",car);
 // newRacer->row = row;
 // newRacer->distance = 0;
 // newRacer->graphic = car;
 return newRacer;
 

car points to a string constant. These are read only, so you can't modify them.

Instead, allocate memory for a string, then modify that:

char *car = strdup("~O=-------o>");

You also need to allocate memory for newRacer:

Racer *newRacer = malloc(sizeof(*newRacer));

Don't forget to check the return value of these functions in case they fail.

The issue lies in the way in which you declare car. When defined as a char* with a string literal, what's really happening is you're storing a reference to a string in an area of read-only memory. To circumvent this, you simply need to declare your variable as a char, like so:

char car = "~O=-------o>";

This is basically syntactic sugar for the following, equivalent code:

char car = '~', 'O', '=', '-', '-', '-', '-', '-', '-', '-', 'o', '>', '' ;