Question

In C# I could do this:

char[] a = new char[] {'a', 'a', 'a'};

But can I do something like that in C++? I tried:

char *a = new char [] {'a', 'a', 'a'};

But it doesn’t compile.

Answer 1

This is a bug in the C++ spec (which doesn’t let this simple construct to compile). You need to supply the size

char *a = new char [3] {'a', 'a', 'a'};

See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/cwg_active.html#1469 . Note that if you parenthesize the type name it is a type-id and not a new-type-id and hence syntactically allows you to omit the size expression. So you may be able to find an implementation that allows you to say

char *a = new (char[]){'a', 'a', 'a'};

Althought it is clear that it wasn’t the explicit intent that this is possible (and some rules in the new paragraphs can be interpreted to forbid it).