String Literals

Question

I have few doubts about string literals in c++.

char *strPtr =\"Hello\" ;
char strArray[] =\"Hello\";

Now strPtr and strArray are considere

Answer 1

char *strPtr ="Hello" ;

Defines strPtr a pointer to char pointing to a string literal "Hello" -- the effective type of this pointer is const char *. No modification allowed through strPtr to the pointee (invokes UB if you try to do so). This is a backward compatibility feature for older C code. This convention is deprecated in C++0x. See Annex C:

Change: String literals made const The type of a string literal is changed from “array of char” to “array of const char.” [...]

Rationale: This avoids calling an inappropriate overloaded function, which might expect to be able to modify its argument.

Effect on original feature: Change to semantics of well-defined feature. Difficulty of converting: Simple syntactic transformation, because string literals can be converted to char*; (4.2). The most common cases are handled by a new but deprecated standard conversion:

char* p = "abc"; // valid in C, deprecated in C++

char* q = expr ? "abc" : "de"; // valid in C, invalid in C++

How widely used: Programs that have a legitimate reason to treat string literals as pointers to potentially modifiable memory are probably rare.

char strArray[] ="Hello";

The declared type of strPtr is -- it is an array of characters of unspecified size containing the string Hello including the null terminator i.e. 6 characters. However, the initialization makes it a complete type and it's type is array of 6 characters. Modification via strPtr is okay.

Where exactly do string literals are stored ?

Implementation defined.