In fact, that does seem what gcc-4.x does. The way to tell is to do
const int *x;
({ *x }) = 1;
and it's (a) legal (assignments to non-lvalues wouldn't work) and (b)
gives a nice warning about assignment to read-only location, which in turn
implies that the compiler properly just peeled off the de-reference even
though it was inside the statement expression.
IOW, at least in gcc-4.3 (and apparently in earlier gcc-4 versions, but
not in gcc-3.4.5), a statement expression with an lvalue return value _is_
actually an lvalue.
But that also means that there is no difference what-so-ever between (x)
and ({ x; }) in gcc-4. And in gcc-3 there is, because apparently in gcc-3
a statement expression is never an lvalue (which is actually the sane
thing, imho).
Linus
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