Dynamic array allocation

Question

I'm wondering why new doesn't seem to retain the array information and just returns an int*:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

typedef int (*p_to_array)[80];
typedef int arr[80];




int main() 
{
   arr a;
   p_to_array p = &a;  //fine

   p_to_array p2 = new arr; // incompatible types 

   return 0;
}

Answer 1

I might be totally wrong about this: (i.e. this is little more than an educated guess)

new arr;

is equivalent to:

new int[80];

which by language rules returns int*.

---

From cppreference.com: (thanks to @interjay for pointing out I actually cited the irrelevant part)

The new-expression returns a prvalue pointer to the constructed object or, if an array of objects was constructed, a pointer to the initial element of the array.

My understanding of that is that when allocating an array, the new[] form will be picked. The only thing your example changes is the syntax; it doesn't make the language treat arrays as non-arrays (regular objects).