FreeTDS Development Group

["Castellano, Nicholas" <Nicholas_Castellano AT acml.com>]

I have just completed several passes over the FreeTDS code base, making much
more widespread use of "const" to indicate data items which should be
considered read-only.

This was useful because it helped located one serious bug
(tds_money_to_string was permanently altering its money input parameter) and
several smaller problems.

I have restricted myself to changing only "internal" interfaces to use
const.  I would like to continue this effort and include exposed portions of
our API.  For example, I would like to change
        RETCODE dbcmd(DBPROCESS *dbproc, char *cmdstring);
to
        RETCODE dbcmd(DBPROCESS *dbproc, const char *cmdstring);
because dbcmd does not (and should not) alter the cmdstring argument.

There is no real technical reason not to do this.  However, there is one
aesthetic argument against it:  Sybase does not use "const" in their
prototypes for these functions.

The real advantage is that it might help spot more bugs in FreeTDS and in
user code calling it, with the help of compiler warnings.

Does anyone object to this change?

Cheers,
--nick


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