On 11/14/24 3:38 PM, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
Hi! lfind(3) does not modify its third argument, *nmemb. It's already suspicious that it takes a pointer, but I guess it's due to historic reasons, and that's already set in stone. However, I don't see why we should not make it 'const'. The function doesn't use it as an output pointer. Should I sent a patch for constifying it?
I believe the reason is that it aims to mirror lsearch, and to be able to be used with it interchangeably as a function with the same type - doesn't `const` make the pointer types distinct and incompatible ?
I'd imagine it's not even used much at all elsewhere given how simple it is and how cumbersome it is to use compared to an directly inlined implementation. That is, I think making it non-const might just happen to break a majority of uses of it.
The only way to plausibly rectify this, I think, would be to make the compatibility implicit in the standard for any similar function (in the same way one might like to make it standard to e.g. pass a pointer to a pointer to const char to strtol).
Have a lovely day! Alex
