Question

I stumbled upon code containing something like:

char c = "abc"[1];

and it compiles and runs fine with gcc! c will be 'b' after this expression.

Is this standard to index literal strings or is it mere luck that it works?

Answer 1

Of course it is, a string literal is of array type. It is converted to a pointer to char in the expression and is like an any pointer to char.

char c = "abc"[1];

and

char *p = "abc";
char c = p[1];

are equivalent.