Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Use of Const keyword in ANSI C
Message-ID: <366@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 8 Sep 88 09:45:34 GMT
References: <441@optilink.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 16

In article <441@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>I'm starting to use the 'const' keyword with the Microsoft V5.1 C compiler.
>I've found something that may be a bug, or it may be that I don't 
>adequately understand 'const'.
>I've defined a structure:
>    typedef struct Tag { ... const char* C; } TestType;
>    TestType Test1 = ...;
>    Test1.C = "not a test case";    /* compiler accepts this -- bad */

The compiler is right: const char *C is to be read *backwards*:
C is a pointer to readonly characters.  If you want C to be constant, say
	char * const C;		/* C is a constant pointer to char */
If you want *both* C and what it points to to be readonly, say
	const char * const C;

The "cdecl" utility -- available from comp.sources archives -- is a big help!