From: Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:21:42 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/6] config: add 'git_config_string' to refactor string config variables.
Message-ID: <200802161921.43346.chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080216115310.GA11318@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Le samedi 16 février 2008, Jeff King a écrit :
> On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 06:00:24AM +0100, Christian Couder wrote:
> > +int git_config_string(const char **dest, const char *var, const char
> > *value) +{
> > +	if (!value)
> > +		return config_error_nonbool(var);
> > +	*dest = xstrdup(value);
> > +	return 0;
> > +}
>
> I'm not sure I see the point in using a 'const char *' as the
> destination. The string isn't inherently const, since it is allocated on
> the heap; callers are free to use it as they please (and are responsible
> for freeing it; while constness doesn't impact calling free() at a
> language level, I think that stylistically it is uncommon for a
> heap-allocated string to be stored as 'const').

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.

Christian.