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From: schmidt@beaver.ics.uci.edu (Doug Schmidt)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Subject: const comparison in C and C++
Message-ID: <709@paris.ICS.UCI.EDU>
Date: 15 Sep 88 06:59:00 GMT
Sender: news@paris.ics.uci.edu
Reply-To: schmidt@beaver.ics.uci.edu (Doug Schmidt)
Organization: University of California, Irvine - Dept of ICS
Lines: 21


Hi,

   Would someone please explain to me the rationale behind C++'s
allowance of ``const's'' objects for use with specifying array size
declarations, as opposed to ANSI-C's reject of this construct?  For
example, the following is legal C++:

----------------------------------------

const int Bar = 100;
int Foo[Bar]; // declares an array of 100 ints

----------------------------------------

However, this does not work with the ANSI-Cesque compilers I've 
tried (gcc, for example).  I'm interested to know the conceptual
differences between the two languages on this point.

thank you,

   Doug Schmidt