i've found const pretty useful, dispite the fact it does create some 
inconsistencies.
it's chief virtue is that you can tell without looking any further than the 
prototype
that a function that takes a const char* makes it's own copy, if it needs one. 

if you're careful with const, i think it can be a help in preventing some silly 
mistakes
that will cause a benign looking program to get up and fandango on core.

unfortunately, glibc, for example, is not very consistant. dispite the fact 
that it returns
a pointer into envp, glibc getenv is declared as "char* getenv(const char*);". 

- erik

Russ Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes

| 
| > I'm trying to find a reference to a tirade against
| > the C const type qualifier. I think it was writtent
| > during the ANSI-isation of C by dmr or perhaps bwk,
| > (or was it was rob).
| 
| http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/dmr-on-noalias.html
| http://tinyurl.com/8435y
| 
| The second (actually a Google Groups url) explains the first.
| 
| Russ

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