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From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Returning error codes from a function
Message-ID: <14284@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 30 Oct 90 22:48:07 GMT
References: <90303.114803JI8@psuvm.psu.edu>
Followup-To: comp.lang.c
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
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In article <90303.114803JI8@psuvm.psu.edu> JI8@psuvm.psu.edu (Dave Jeffery) writes:
>   1. Does this violate ANSI C ?

No, it's okay.  The most important reference is 3.3.16.1.

>   2. Is it portable ?

No, because pre-ANSI compilers generally did not support void*.
Since these error coded are really char* anyway, why not just
use char*.  In fact a typedef would be nice:
	typedef char *ErrorCode;
	typedef const char ErrorDef[];	/* for unchanging constants */
	#define NO_ERROR 0	/* or some other form of null pointer */

	static ErrorDef	error1 = "error1";
	...

	ErrorCode ourfun(args) {
		...
		return error1;
	}
There are all sorts of possible variations on this theme.