*sigh* We went through that in the other thread. You do not necessarily need to press backspace 4 times to delete an indent of 4 spaces, or press space 4 times to indent by 4 spaces. For some editors with the appropriate settings Shift + Tab may do the former while Tab may do the latter.But then I would have to tab back 4 times instead of one to delete (or press space 4 times to ident) those spaces when you post the code somewhere.
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart WayOriginally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
I mean browser. Not IDE. I remember that.
It seems un-C like for the standard to say that string literals MUST be read-only.
Does it?
If it does not, then the reason to use const is to ENSURE that they are read-only.
Oh, and on the tab/space issue, I'm a 4 spaces guy.
But you aren't allocating the memory for the string.
The compiler must put that string somewhere and does so in a read-only section[1], so you can't modify it (you would get an access violation).
So the strings SHOULD be const char* from the beginning! Why it actually allows char* is beyond me.
[1] I believe this is compiler (and possibly OS) defined. Not 100% sure, but nevertheless, it's safer to use const char* to ensure it's portable.
Historical reason. Too much code was written before const existence that uses char* for that matter. The modern code should use const char*Why it actually allows char* is beyond me.
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
