[Mark McLeod]

You are running into defined limits on how many bytes of global or local variables are available within any one project file or within any one routine.
It's not your one array of [56], but the sum of all the variables you've declared. For instance, if you have a couple of other variables declared, like so:

int a,b,c;
int example_array[55];

then

// int a,b,c;
int example_array[58];

would work for you.

The magic number is 256 bytes (or 128 int's).

• 256 bytes of global variables (outside any routine or static) in any one project file (block).
• 120 bytes of local variables declared within any single routine (not static)

but you should test the limits as you've been doing.