Static intialization of flexible arrays in C++

[Eljay Love-Jensen]

Hi Nitin,

 >Flexible arrays are indeed legal.

Incorrect:  they are not legal in C++98 nor C++03, and they are unspecified 
behavior for C89 (and, hence, not necessarily portable).

I presume they are "indeed legal" for C99 (I haven't programmed in C since 
1990, so I'm out of the loop).  But you were not asking about C99, you were 
asking about C++.

 >I thought C++ is a superset of C and C code should compile in a C++ 
compiler (except for strict type checking) ..but guess not.

C++98 is *MOSTLY* a superset of C89.

C99 diverges even further from C89; and thus, further divergence and 
discrepancies from C++98 (or C++03).

The C99 standardization committee made it clear that they are not beholden 
to C++-isms in determining the best course-of-evolution in steering / 
developing / improving the C standards.

 >gcc 3.3.3 compiles it just fine. g++ 3.3.3 doesnt.

GCC for C code (and the appropriate flags) compiles C code as per the C99 
(ISO 9899:1999 specification).

GCC for C++ code (and the appropriate flags) compiles C++ code pretty darn 
close to C++03 (ISO 14882:2003 specification).

Those flags being such things as -pedantic, -ansi, -std={something}, 
-trigraphs, et cetera.

HTH,
--Eljay