Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote: > Dear all, > > from comments in the #gcc irc channel, I understood that it is not > advisable for gcc patches to use the const qualifier in function > prototypes. I would like to understand why. Apart from its main > purpose, I believed that the use of 'const' helps the compiler to > optimise the code.
It generally doesn't, unless you apply const to the underlying type, and not just the pointer. IE you say you have a pointer to a constant piece of memory, not a constant pointer to a piece of memory. Otherwise, we generally *already* know it doesn't change, we don't need your help :) The only places it helps therefore are in globals, and if you enjoy passing the address of pointers to functions. This is the way things are in C, anyway. In C++, with nice things like const methods, it's a different story. --Dan
