Re: new an array of pointers

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:11:26 +0100
Message-ID:
<hnu4u1$a6l$1@news.eternal-september.org>
* James Kanze:

On 18 Mar, 10:05, thomas <freshtho...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

----------
int **p = new int *[30]; //OK


Evaluates as:

    int** p = new (int (*([30]));

An array of 30 int*.

int **p = new (int) *[30]; //ERROR


    int** p = (new (int)) * [30];

Don't know what the compiler is supposed to make of the [30],
given that there's no address expression to the left of it.
(And the '*' is multiplication.)

int **p = new (int*)[30]; //ERROR


    int** p = (new (int*))[30];

Here, the initialization expression is a syntactically legal
expression (but would have undefined behavior at runtime),


new expressions are a wilderness of special case rules. On reading your
statement I thought huh, that must a placement form syntactically. But as it
turned out[1] I was wrong[2] about why you're wrong here,

<example>
"ComeauTest.c", line 3: error: this operator is not allowed at this point; use
           parentheses
       int **p = new (int*)[30];
                          ^

"ComeauTest.c", line 3: error: a value of type "int *" cannot be used to initialize
           an entity of type "int **"
       int **p = new (int*)[30];
</example>

but
it doesn't have the type int**: the new expression returns an
int** (pointing to a single uninitialized int*), but
dereferencing it (remember, a[b] is the same as *(a+b)) results
in an int*.


Right, but first it must pass muster syntactically.

Cheers,

- Alf

Notes:
[1] Also g++ and MSVC object to the construct; g++ like Comeau.
[2] Yet another case where coffee is called for.

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