[petsc-dev] declaring argument as const basic type in PETSc

[Dmitry Karpeev]

That's just a typo on my part.
I'm rewriting the whole SA ball of wax, but I can push a quicker fix
for this too,
but, unfortunately, I won't be able to do that untill next Monday.


Dmitry.

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
>
>   Some declarations of the form
>
> extern PetscErrorCode SAAddData(SA arr, const PetscInt len, const PetscInt *ia, const PetscScalar *wa, const PetscInt *ja);
>
> have crept into PETSc.  const PetscInt len
>
> Do we want to have such beasties? What purpose do they serve?
>
> My understanding is that it is contaminating the entire code (because of the extern PetscErrorCode SAAddData(SA arr, const PetscInt len, const PetscInt *ia, const PetscScalar *wa, const PetscInt *ja); with the knowledge that internally the subroutine never changes the value of the stack variable function which is the opposite of encapsulation. What am I missing? Is this just stupid C syntax, is there a better way?
>
>   Thanks
>
>    Barry
>
>