It looks like this might be caused by a couple of bugs in the add-ons.

I'll investigate it.

Why does this not work?

array arr = {"a", "b", "c"}; // "Argument cannot be assigned. Output will be discarded" compiler warning

Are you using the default add-ons scriptarray.cpp and scriptstdstring.cpp? Or custom versions?

The following code works as expected:

{
  engine = asCreateScriptEngine(ANGELSCRIPT_VERSION);
  engine->SetMessageCallback(asMETHOD(COutStream, Callback), &out, asCALL_THISCALL);
 
  RegisterStdString(engine);
  RegisterScriptArray(engine, false);
 
  asIScriptModule *mod = engine->GetModule("test", asGM_ALWAYS_CREATE);
  mod->AddScriptSection("test",
    "array<string> arr = {'a', 'b', 'c'}; \n");
  r = mod->Build();
  if( r < 0 )
    TEST_FAILED;
 
  engine->Release();
}

//array arr = cast>(d['arr']); // works

//array@ arr = null;
//bool found = d.get('arr', @arr); // works (found == true)

//array arr;
//bool found = d.get('arr', arr); // doesn't work (found == false)

array arr;
bool found = d.get('arr', @arr); // doesn't work (found == true, but arr variable is empty)
Could you help me understand why the 3rd and 4th options don't work?

The 3rd option didn't work because the dictionary didn't have support for doing a value assignment with the stored handle (fixed in revision 1997). Also, I'd like to point out that the returned boolean from the get() method is not really indicating if the entry was found, but rather if the value could be retrieved, i.e. if the stored entry is compatible with the requested type. (I've updated the example in the documentation to better reflect this too).

The 4th option doesn't work because the local variable arr is not a handle and cannot be reassigned to refer to the contained handle in the dictionary. This is indicated by the compiler with the warning "Argument cannot be assigned. Output will be discarded". The get() method still returns true though, because it has no idea that the calling function will discard the output after the call. (the warning should probably have been an error instead, I'll look into that)

By using anonymous objects like this:

dictionary d = { {'arr', array<string> = {'abc', 'def'}} };

Regards,

Andreas