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The const keyword (part 2)

Posted by Strainu | Filed under C, C++

In part 1 we introduced the const keyword. Today we’ll talk about constant pointers.

Let’s say you want to define a constant pointer. Which of the following declarations will you use?

The answer is: the second or the third. The first declaration defines a pointer to a constant integer and the third one defines a constant pointer to a constant integer.

Another interesting case is when defining a constant char array (credits go to Ulrich Drepper, link via RazvanD):

Although this code will give a warning (passing `const char *’ as argument 1 of `strcpy(char *, const char *)’ discards qualifiers is the exact message on Dev-C++), it will run, because s is allocated in the heap, so it is treated much like a pointer. You can force the value to be constant by adding the static keyword, wich will force the compiler to allocate s in read-only memory:

Tags: C/C++, const