Inconsistency between std::string and string literals

Question

I have discovered a disturbing inconsistency between std::string and string literals in C++0x:

#include 
#include          


        

Answer 1

According to N3290 6.5.4, if the range is an array, boundary values are initialized automatically without begin/end function dispatch.
So, how about preparing some wrapper like the following?

struct literal_t {
    char const *b, *e;
    literal_t( char const* b, char const* e ) : b( b ), e( e ) {}
    char const* begin() const { return b; }
    char const* end  () const { return e; }
};

template< int N >
literal_t literal( char const (&a)[N] ) {
    return literal_t( a, a + N - 1 );
};

Then the following code will be valid:

for (auto e : literal("hello")) ...

If your compiler provides user-defined literal, it might help to abbreviate:

literal operator"" _l( char const* p, std::size_t l ) {
    return literal_t( p, p + l ); // l excludes '\0'
}

for (auto e : "hello"_l) ...

EDIT: The following will have smaller overhead (user-defined literal won't be available though).

template< size_t N >
char const (&literal( char const (&x)[ N ] ))[ N - 1 ] {
    return (char const(&)[ N - 1 ]) x;
}

for (auto e : literal("hello")) ...