Re: [TCLCORE] TIP #340: Const Qualification of Tcl_SetResult's Argument and -Wwrite-strings

[Joe E. <jen...@fl...>]

Donald G Porter wrote:

> Jan Nijtmans wrote:
> > ...Worse: the signature of Tcl_HashStats is wrong: it should never
> > have returned a const char*!
>
> Please explain.  Especially in light of the fact that TIP 27 was
> the motivation for converting the return value of Tcl_HashStats()
> from (char *) to (const char *).

Tcl_HashStats is documented as:

| Tcl_HashStats returns a dynamically-allocated string  [...]
| It is the caller’s responsibility to free the result
|                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| string by passing it to ckfree.
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So the return value must be a non-const char *.
(Freeing counts as a modification.)


--Joe English