Why does decltype on a string literal not yield an array type?

Question

The standard defines a string literal\'s type, in §2.13.5/8, as:

Ordinary string literals and UTF-8 string literals are also referred to as narrow str

Answer 1

You have to remove the reference first, since the type deduced by decltype is const char (&)[N], not just const char [N]:

std::cout << std::boolalpha << std::is_array<
    typename std::remove_reference::type
>::value << '\n'; // true