Getting the number of elements in std::array at compile time

array<T>::size() is constexpr, but you can’t use it in this way because a1 isn’t a constexpr value. Additionally, it can’t be constexpr because string isn’t a literal type.

However, you can work around this if you want, by deducing the size_t template parameter. Example:

#include <string>
#include <array>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

template<typename>
struct array_size;
template<typename T, size_t N>
struct array_size<array<T,N> > {
    static size_t const size = N;
};

array<string, 42> a1;
array<string, array_size<decltype(a1)>::size> a2;

int main() {
    cout << a2.size() << endl;
}