This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 115d. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-10-26

1213. Array subscripting and xvalues

[Moved to DR status at the April, 2013 meeting.]

Because the subscripting operation is defined as indirection through a pointer value, the result of a subscript operator applied to an xvalue array is an lvalue, not an xvalue. This could be surprising to some.

Proposed resolution (December, 2012):

Change 7.6.1.2 [expr.sub] paragraph 1 as follows:

A postfix expression followed by an expression in square brackets is a postfix expression. One of the expressions shall have the type “array of T” or “pointer to T” and the other shall have unscoped enumeration or integral type. The result is an lvalue of type “T.” The type “T” shall be a completely-defined object type.⁶² The expression E1[E2] is identical (by definition) to *((E1)+(E2)) [Note: see 7.6.2 [expr.unary] and 7.6.6 [expr.add] for details of * and + and 9.3.4.5 [dcl.array] for details of arrays. —end note], except that in the case of an array operand, the result is an lvalue if that operand is an lvalue and an xvalue otherwise.

(See also issue 616.)

Additional note (January, 2013):

The preceding resolution differs from that discussed in the December, 2012 drafting review teleconference by the deletion of the words “an lvalue” in the second sentence. The issue has consequently been moved to "review" status instead of "tentatively ready."