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Vaughn Cato · Guest

I recently read Bjarne Stroustrup and Gabriel Dos Reis's paper on
generalized initializer lists. One point that I don't understand is
4.5.3. Here they say that having a T(&)[N] constructor wouldn't be
good because it would force all initializers to be templates, and that
treating the initializer as a constant would not be much of an
advantage. While I agree with these points, it seems there is an easy
solution.

template <typename T>
class initializer_list {
public:
template <size_t N>
initializer_list(const T (&init)[N])
: begin_(init),
end_(init+N)
{
}
private:
const T * begin_;
const T * end_;
};

Then you could have

template <typename T>
class Array {
public:
Array(const initializer_list<T> & init);