Re: string variables and literals

[sidster <patrick at mail dot boxsoft dot com>]

Greetings,

* Alexandre Oliva (aoliva@redhat.com) [20000830 21:05]:
> On Aug 31, 2000, Eric Lemings <elemings@uswest.net> wrote:
> 
> > Just as s3 was initialized with a copy of its string literal,
> > shouldn't s4 be intialized with the location of a copy of the string
> > literal placed in some arbitrary part of writable memory?
> 
> No, it shouldn't.  But it might, if someone contributes a patch to
> assign strings stored in pointers to non-const char to writable
> memory.  I don't know how hard it would be to do it.


I may be missing something (mis-understanding this discussion or
something) but what is the utility of such a patch?


When you have code like:

   char* p = "some string";

'p' is a pointer to a constant static string.  The memory location
pointed to by 'p' should not be modifiable.

The compiler doesn't warn about this but the user should be smart enough
to realize s/he can't modify the character array pointed to by 'p'.

This is one of the frist things you are tought when learning C.

patrick
--
when i grow up i want to be a famous rock'n roll guitar player
      -- steve vai