Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ukma!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!twwells!bill From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.std.c Subject: Re: Thoughts on `const' parameters Message-ID: <230@twwells.uucp> Date: 1 Dec 88 05:31:41 GMT References: <957@vsi.COM> Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) Distribution: comp Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 19 Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Keywords: In article <957@vsi.COM> friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) writes: : Let's say that I have a function like strchr(), which : might be written as: : : char *strchr(const char *string, int ch) : [function body omitted] : : What prevents me from passing a const argument (say, a string : in readonly memory), locating my desired character within the string, : and then storing a NUL there? Nothing in the declaration prevents : this, and I've not done anything illegal like playing cast games. Nothing at all prevents you from doing this, other than your skill as a programmer. It's one of the loopholes. All that the const modifier says here is that the string isn't modified in the function. --- Bill {uunet|novavax}!proxftl!twwells!bill