http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=48562
--- Comment #6 from Johannes Schaub <schaub.johannes at googlemail dot com> 2011-09-25 14:22:33 UTC --- (In reply to comment #5) > Johannes, sorry about the dumb question: now I understand the issue decently > well - and after all boils down to adding a warning - but I'm not sure to > understand your code snippet: is it meant to crash at runtime? Trigger > valgrind > errors? In the C++11 spec, it is said that the lifetime of the backing-up array is the same as the lifetime of the initializer_list object which was initialized by the array (not considering the DRs and their resolution that Jason has pointed to). My code was just meant to test whether GCC obeys those rules. struct X { X(int) { cout << "+"; } X(X const&) { cout << "+"; } ~X() { cout << "-"; } }; auto *p = new initalizer_list<X>{1, 2, 3}; // ... not at this delete p; // C++11 requires "now" at this point ... (again not considering those DRs that revise these rules). I think that a warning against "({...})" would be useful too // fine initializer_list<int> a{1, 2, 3}; // this is bad initializer_list<int> b({1, 2, 3}); Second one is bad because it will destroy the array after initializing 'b', and won't lengthen the lifetime (because it will use the copy/move constructor).