Why does the compiler swear at an array whose dimension is given by a static constant?

Question

C++ / C#

Hello, I declare the following structure:

struct Packet
{
    static const int bytes_for_content; //определяется в соотв-ем cpp файле
//...
    char content[bytes_for_content]; //это компилятору и не понравилось
};

Tell me what's wrong.

Answer 1

The size of the fields of the structure is determined at compile time, and the value of the constant is assigned at runtime of the program, so it swears. Use #define for things like this.

Answer 2

struct Packet
{
    static const int bytes_for_content; 
//...
    char content[bytes_for_content]; //это компилятору и не понравилось
};
const int Packet::bytes_for_content = 100;

Somehow the compiler should like it. ;-)

Answer 3

Thank you all for your participation, although in truth I did not fully understand this topic and used an anonymous enum in my program for constants.