[vlc-devel] [PATCH] fix "initialization from incompatible pointer type" warnings at libvlc-common.c:1406 and libvlc-common.c:1812

[Michael [Plouj] Ploujnikov]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 6:05 AM, Rémi Denis-Courmont <rem at videolan.org> wrote:
> Le jeudi 17 avril 2008, Pierre d'Herbemont a écrit :
>
> > On Apr 17, 2008, at 7:40 AM, Rafaël Carré wrote:
>  > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>  > > Hash: SHA1
>  > >
>  > > Le Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:19:02 -0400,
>  > >
>  > > Michael Ploujnikov <ploujj at gmail.com> a écrit :
>  > >> Apparently, C can't automatically make such a pointer conversion.
>  > >
>  > > If the compiler says we are making strange things, we should let
>  > > the warning here to be aware there's something wrong.

First of all, I interpret this code:

const char *const *pp_shortcut = p_parser->pp_shortcuts;

as creating a pointer to access some data while guaranteeing that the
data will only be read and not changed. This is done by using a
"pointer to const pointer to const char" (const char *const
*pp_shortcut). To me this sounds like a good approach to preventing
accidental changes to data where write access is not needed.

As far as I can see, the compiler is complaining because the C
standard [1] simply does not specify an automatic conversion from
non-const to const qualified values. I did not find any mention of
such conversions in that document, and some experienced C user assured
me that I won't find it there. On the other hand, the C++ standard[2],
allows for such a conversion. Based on my understanding of the
terminology-filled language used in the document, such conversions are
dealt with somewhere in section 4.4. I would like to use this fact as
an argument even though I understand that C and C++ are radically
different languages.

With all that in mind, I _feel_ that that using the casts as in my
patch is a good way of keeping code relatively safe and removing
distracting compiler warnings [3]. On the other hand, maybe the local
variable pp_shortcut should just be a "char **"?


[1] - http://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n1124.pdf
[2] - http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2008/n2521.pdf
[3] - http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.0/gcc/Warnings-and-Errors.html#Warnings-and-Errors

-- 
Michael Ploujnikov
http://plouj.com/