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

[Chetan Jhurani]

I never meant to say that one must put const ints in the

declaration.  Whether it is there or not, the caller is not

affected.

 

My point was const ints are useful on the developer side.

 

GNU Scientific Library and Intel and MKL use const ints for

CBLAS function declarations.  Hadn’t noticed it earlier.

I’ve seen it being used in professional closed source code.

People stumble upon this idea unintentionally (because it

has been working silently for a long time and not all

compilers warn). And then some like it and some don’t.

 

Chetan

 

 

From: petsc-dev-bounces at mcs.anl.gov [mailto:petsc-dev-bounces at mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Jed Brown
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 1:32 PM
To: For users of the development version of PETSc
Subject: Re: [petsc-dev] declaring argument as const basic type in PETSc

 

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 12:29, Chetan Jhurani <chetan.jhurani at gmail.com> wrote:

can be avoided by putting const int in declaration
as well.

 

Right, but doing this is nonsense because it puts implementation details in a public header, the "anti-encapsulation". Just don't use const for value parameters.

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