Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified

From	Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de>
Newsgroups	comp.std.c
Subject	Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified
Date	2020-05-06 19:25 +0200
Organization	solani.org
Message-ID	<r8urv8$82c$1@solani.org> (permalink)

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There are 4 functions (getenv, localeconv, setlocale, strerror) in the
standard library that return a pointer and state that the return value
points to something that "shall not be modified by the program". I
suggest to make these functions return pointers-to-const, e.g.

change

char *strerror(int errnum);

to

const char *strerror(int errnum);

A draft proposal is at
http://www.colecovision.eu/stuff/proposal-const-shall-not-be-modified-stdlib.html

Do you see any problem with this change?

I was wondering if it make sense to also change the char * members of
struct lconf to const char *, but I fear that change might break more stuff.

Philipp

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Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-05-06 19:25 +0200
  Re: Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-05-06 13:18 -0700
    Re: Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified Chris Peterson <cpeterson@mozilla.com> - 2020-08-19 10:44 -0700
      Re: Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-08-28 11:40 +0200
      Re: Return pointers-to-const where data shall not be modified James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2020-08-28 08:42 -0400

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