String constification

[Dmitry Timoshkov]

"Francois Gouget" <fgouget at free.fr> wrote:

> We find the same issues with an added twist: now that we can use
> literals we can write things like:
> 
>    const char* str = "String literal";
> 
> However this is slightly different from:
> 
>    static const char* str[] = "String literal";
> 
> The difference is that in the first case sizeof(str) returns 4 (on 32
> bit machines<g>) while in the latter we get 15. Some of our code relies
> on this so care must be taken when converting the latter to the former.

My understanding of this is that in the first case you declare a const
pointer and hope that a compiler is smart enough to place a pointed by
it object into a read only section, while in the second case you explicitly
say to a compiler to place the whole object into a read only section.

I prefer to not rely on a compiler's good will.

-- 
Dmitry.