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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: const * question
Message-ID: <31165@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 18-Oct-87 00:29:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.31165
Posted: Sun Oct 18 00:29:32 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Oct-87 22:38:42 EDT
References: <1151@lznv.ATT.COM>
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Lines: 13
Keywords: const pointer

> Have I missed an important point?  Have the compiler writers confused
> return conversion semantics with assignment return semantics in this
> case?  Which needs the fix:  my code, or their compiler?

Neither, technically; you are trying to get the language to let you do
something reasonable, and the rules of the language - which are being correctly
interpreted by the compiler - won't let you.  In effect, you want a
polymorphous function that takes a "const char *" argument and returns a "const
char *" value, and takes a "char *" argument and returns a "char *" value;
however, C doesn't support polymorphism.
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com