From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 20:12:07 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Detect renames in diff family.
Message-ID: <428CF317.5010103@zytor.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0505191148470.2322@ppc970.osdl.org>

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> IOW, you're screwed. "execvp()" really should take an argument of type
> "const char * const *", but it doesn't for historical reasons.
> 

The real problem, IMNSHO, is that C doesn't allow a pointer to a pointer 
to a non-const object to be implicitly treated as a pointer to a pointer 
to a const object.  C should have required those two pointer classes to 
have the same representation (which they would in any sane, and pretty 
much any insane, system) and therefore a lot of functions could have the 
additional consts added to their prototypes.

At least one can do casts on sane architectures... :-/

	-hpa