Difference between char and char[1]

Question

In C++ what is the difference (if any) between using char and char[1].

examples:

struct SomeStruct
{
   char x;
   char y[1];
};

Do

Answer 1

If you've actually seen the construct char y[1] as the last member of a struct in production code, then it is fairly likely that you've encountered an instance of the struct hack.

That short array is a stand-in for a real, but variable length array (recall that before c99 there was no such thing in the c standard). The programmer would always allocate such structs on the heap, taking care to insure that the allocation was big enough for the actual size of array that he wanted to use.