------- Comment #11 from bangerth at dealii dot org 2007-08-20 14:56 ------- (In reply to comment #10) > I now think that Andrew is right and that PR33086 and this one are INVALID. > 'const' does not mean read-only in C++ at all, and much less in C. atoi(const > char *) could always initialize buf[].
Uh, no, it can't. If it did (by casting away the 'const' from its argument and then writing into the array), this would lead to a segfault: ------------- const char a[3] = "10"; int main () { return atoi (a); } ------------- The reason being that compilers will typically place 'a' into a read-only memory section. Passing an uninitialized object as a const reference or pointer is a bad idea in C++ and should get a warning as a rule. I can't see reasons that would warrant exceptions from this rule. W. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10138