On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 00:56 +1100, Matthew Hannigan wrote: > On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 05:49:49PM +1100, Benno wrote: > > I can't actually find it in the C spec but from googling it does appear > > that string literals are constants with static storage duration which > > means they have lifetime of the program. > > > > (But I still wouldn't use that style, it is confusing at best.) > > I've used it for error messages; a 0 return means ok, > non-0 is an error message to be spat out. > > I'm sure I've seen gnu software use it too; possibly > even this way. > > fwiw, I'm far from sure it's a great idea, but it sure > beats mallocing something that is never going to be changed.
Well for long lived programs, you usually dont assume that *all* errors will be static, some may have dynamic content. So that implies (in the common case) that the emitter of the error will clean it up (unless you have a pseudo object system where you pass the used error back to the creator). Its the emitter cleaning it up that implies that all errors should be 'free'able. Rob -- GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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