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From: hansen@pegasus.UUCP (Tony L. Hansen)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: String help! (getting ANSI C strings back out of ROM)
Message-ID: <2181@pegasus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Mar-85 23:29:44 EST
Article-I.D.: pegasus.2181
Posted: Mon Mar 18 23:29:44 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Mar-85 08:03:03 EST
References: <1156@ukma.UUCP> <113@mit-athena.UUCP> <573@rlgvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, Lincroft NJ
Lines: 20

By definition, in ANSI C (according to the latest Feb. draft) string
constants are of type "const char[]".  The first horrified thought that
comes to the mind of many UNIX programmers is "What do I do with all of my
calls to mktemp() now?"  Easy!

	mktemp ("/tmp/fooXXXXXX");

		becomes

	mktemp ( (char *) "/tmp/fooXXXXXX");

Since the cast is used withOUT the "const" qualifier, the compiler is forced
to place the string in writable memory.  Note that I am NOT casting a "char *"
back into a "char *", but am instead casting a "const char *" into a "char *".

Since the number of times that such idioms will be needed will be very small,
this change to ANSI C will definitely be more beneficial than harmful.

					Tony Hansen
					pegasus!hansen