Increment variable by N inside array index

Question

Could someone please tell me whether or not such a construction is valid (i.e not an UB) in C++. I have some segfaults because of that and spent couple of days trying to figure out what is going on there.

// Synthetic example  
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    int array[2] = {99, 99};
    /*
      The point is here. Is it legal? Does it have defined behaviour? 
      Will it increment first and than access element or vise versa? 
    */
    std::cout << array[argc += 7]; // Use argc just to avoid some optimisations
}

So, of course I did some analysis, both GCC(5/7) and clang(3.8) generate same code. First add than access.

Clang(3.8):  clang++ -O3 -S test.cpp

    leal    7(%rdi), %ebx
    movl    .L_ZZ4mainE5array+28(,%rax,4), %esi
    movl    $_ZSt4cout, %edi
    callq   _ZNSolsEi
    movl    $.L.str, %esi
    movl    $1, %edx
    movq    %rax, %rdi
    callq   _ZSt16__ostream_insertIcSt11char_traitsIcEERSt13basic_ostreamIT_T0_ES6_PKS3_l

GCC(5/7) g++-7 -O3 -S test.cpp

    leal    7(%rdi), %ebx
    movl    $_ZSt4cout, %edi
    subq    $16, %rsp
    .cfi_def_cfa_offset 32
    movq    %fs:40, %rax
    movq    %rax, 8(%rsp)
    xorl    %eax, %eax
    movabsq $425201762403, %rax
    movq    %rax, (%rsp)
    movslq  %ebx, %rax
    movl    (%rsp,%rax,4), %esi
    call    _ZNSolsEi
    movl    $.LC0, %esi
    movq    %rax, %rdi
    call    _ZStlsISt11char_traitsIcEERSt13basic_ostreamIcT_ES5_PKc
    movl    %ebx, %esi

So, can I assume such a baheviour is a standard one?

Answer 1

By itself array[argc += 7] is OK, the result of argc + 7 will be used as an index to array.

However, in your example array has just 2 elements, and argc is never negative, so your code will always result in UB due to an out-of-bounds array access.