In C, the type of a string literal is char[n] where n is the length of the literal plus 1. In C++, it's "array of n const char", or const char[n] I

In C, the type of a string literal is char[n] where n is the length of the literal plus 1. In C++, it's "array of n const char", or const char[n] It's not of a reference type. See the ISO C++11 standard, 2.4.15 [lex.string]. (In both C and C++, array expressions "decay" to pointer expressions in most contexts. But for example sizeof "hello" is 6 (the size of the string), not the size of a char* pointer.