🚀 go-pugleaf

Greg McGary <gkm@magilla.cichlid.com> writes:

>According to sec. 4.4: Qualification conversions, paragraph 3, the
>following is NOT a const-safe conversion:

>	char * *  --> char const * *

>whereas this is safe:

>	char * *  --> char const *const *

>Why?  I don't see how *adding* `const' an any level of a multi-level
>pointer could lessen safety.

It's very un-intuitive (keeps coming up in various guises in c.l.c++,
too -- and comp.sather, comp.object, comp.<whatever>...:-), but
nevertheless true.  Consider this example:

	const char array[] = "Hello";
	void naive(const char **p) {
	    *p = &array[0];
	}
	void tricky(char **p) {
	    naive(p);
	}
	//...
	char *q;
	tricky(&q);
	*q='P';

What's going on here?  Const safety is clearly violated, since
the last statement tries to change the value of a character
that has been defined as constant; there were no casts anywhere;
_where_ was our safety compromised?

Answer: in tricky()'s call on naive(), where a char** was
transformed into a const char**.  That transformatoin is not safe.

Why?  Because transforming X*->Y* is ok iff Y can be everywhere
substituted for X (Liskov principle); and a "char const *"
cannot be _everywhere_ substituted for a "char *" -- in
particular, it cannot be when it's dereferenced and the
result _changed_.


Alex
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