Expected constant expression

[John E]

In MSVC-8 (VS2005) it isn't possible to declare an array using a variable name for the array size - i.e.

int somevar = 20;
int array[somevar];

The above causes an error ("expected constant expression") at the line where the array gets declared. But I gather that it's legal in more recent versions of MSVC. Does anyone known when it became legal (i.e. which version)? It's just so I can make a suitable #define

[2kaud]

Make somevar a const int.

[John E]

Thanks 2kaud but that's just my simplistic example. In the actual code I want to create a #ifdef so that (for other compilers) a variable value can be used - but for MSVC-8 (or any other incompatible MSVC compilers) a predefined constant value will get used.

[2kaud]

For c++ the size of the array needs to be determined at compile time. If the size is not known at compile time then why not use a vector?

In c99 its possible to use a non-const variable to define the size of an array at run-time but that's not a c++ feature.

[John E]

I just tried again (this time with VS2015) but it still wouldn't compile my example (although your suggestion to use const did work).

So I'm guessing that MSVC still doesn't support C99 (or at least, not this bit of it)

[2kaud]

See
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...the-stack-in-c

Also from Herb,
https://herbsutter.com/2012/05/03/re...ut-vc-and-c99/