From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:33:13 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/6] config: add 'git_config_string' to refactor string config variables.
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