error C2552: 'pairs' : non-aggregates cannot be initialized with initializer list

Question

How do I fix this to get this to compile?

#include <utility>

int main() {
    const std::pair<const char*, const char*> pairs[] = { {"String A", "String 1"}, 
                                                          {"String B", "String 2"} 
    }; 

}

Giving this compiler error:

1>main.cpp(256): error C2552: 'pairs' : non-aggregates cannot be initialized with initializer list
1>          'std::pair<_Ty1,_Ty2>' : Types with user defined constructors are not aggregate
1>          with
1>          [
1>              _Ty1=const char *,
1>              _Ty2=const char *
1>          ]
1>main.cpp(257): error C2552: 'pairs' : non-aggregates cannot be initialized with initializer list
1>          'std::pair<_Ty1,_Ty2>' : Types with user defined constructors are not aggregate
1>          with
1>          [
1>              _Ty1=const char *,
1>              _Ty2=const char *
1>          ]

Answer 1

What you are doing is uniform initialization which was introduced in C++11. The C++11 compatibility in VS2012 is minimal at best, and missing completely in many areas.

You simply can't use a syntax like that using that version of Visual Studio. Instead you have to use e.g. std::make_pair:

const std::pair<const char*, const char*> pairs[] = {
    std::make_pair("String A", "String 1"),
    std::make_pair("String B", "String 2")
};

Answer 2

On Ubuntu g++ 4.9.2 it works fine. Don`t know for sure about Visual Studio 2012. But first variant is that you need to use a constructor, and a second this feature is added in VS2013(bracket initialization).