the "const" qualifier

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <742 at ccssrv.UUCP> perry at ccssrv.UUCP (Perry Hutchison) writes:
>It sounds to me like the current "proposed standard" deserves to be voted
>down and sent back to committee to have this mess (and any other problems
>which may have surfaced) cleaned up.

Fortunately for the C programming community, numerous people in a much
better position than you to make such a judgement have decided that the
currently proposed Standard is technically good enough as it now stands.

I'm sorry if you think I described a "mess".  Perhaps that's what I get
for trying to give an honest but brief description of the relevant
history.  In fact there IS NO MESS in this regard in the proposed
Standard.  There IS a void that has been left unfilled, but its effect
is relatively minor.  The two practical consequences will be:

	Occasionally, interface designers will have to decide whether
	or not 	to require a type cast to be used, as in the execve()
	example that started this thread.

	Certain types of optimization will require more complicated
	global flow analysis, or use of nonstandard extensions.