Bizarre way to 'new' arrays

[Gregor Richards]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> 
>> I was looking through parse.c again, and in the ::parseNewExp() 
>> function, I noticed something odd.  Interested, I typed this in:
>>
>> int[] x = new int[](4);
>>
>> And it compiles and runs.  Writing
>>
>> writefln(x.length);
>>
>> displays 4.
>>
>> This is legal because a NewExpression can be defined as
>>
>> 'new' [(ArgumentList)] Type (ArgumentList)
>>
>> So in the case of 'new int[](4)', int[] is parsed as the Type and the 
>> (4) is parsed as the argument list.  In fact, writing 'new int[4]' is 
>> just syntactic sugar for 'new int[](4)'.  This makes sense, as when 
>> you new an array (or anything for that matter), you're really calling 
>> a function.
> 
> 
> Sadly, this isn't legal:
> 
>     int* i = new int(5);
> 
> To allocate and initialize an integer.  AFAIK there's no way around 
> having the assignment as a separate statement following the allocation.
> 
> 
> Sean


int* i = (new int[5]).ptr;

  - Gregor Richards