Re: [PATCH 2/6] config: add 'git_config_string' to refactor string config variables.

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 16, 2008, 18:33 UTC
Message-ID: <20080216183312.GA20777@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <200802161921.43346.chriscool@tuxfamily.org>

On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 07:21:42PM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:

> Well, in many places where this function could be used the dest string is 
> a "const char *" and in many other places it's a "char *", but it feels 
> safer to try to promote the latter into the former (like I did in the 
> following patches) rather than the other way around.

Hrm. I suppose that is true if you are talking about removing the 'const' from existing variables (which although pointing to non-const allocated space in this instance, may in other code paths point to actual const space).

But this is really a matter of C handling this poorly, because we have to pass in a pointer rather than using the return value. So I think the method that best reflects the desired behavior would be to actually cast "const char *" to "char *" at the callsite. But unfortunately casts in C are error-prone themselves, and make the code a little harder to read.

So perhaps your solution is a reasonable compromise.

-Peff