Re: [PATCH 6/5] grep.c: mark eol/bol and derived as "const char * const"

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sep 21, 2021, 14:53 UTC
Message-ID: <YUnx7gt0KQNRlhuZ@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <patch-1.1-c317e6e125e-20210921T124416Z-avarab@gmail.com>

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 02:45:16PM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> I think that generally git's codebase could use going beyond just
> "const char *" when a "const char * const" would suffice, for some
> reason we seem to mostly use it for the static usage variables.

I didn't dig up the references in the list archive, but I feel like we've had this discussion long ago. One of the reasons not to do so is that it pollutes the function's interface with internal details. The caller does not care whether the function is going to modify the pointer itself, because it is passed by value. You could apply the same logic that we should be passing "const int", and so on.

-Peff