On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 04:48:48PM +0200, Alan Barrett wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Andrew Brown wrote:
>> if i understand this properly (seebs?), it's like this:
>> 
>>    "const char **" is a pointer to a constant pointer to a character.
>>    "char * const*" is a pointer to a pointer to a constant character.
>>    the former is in the prototype.  the latter is the type end up with
>>    when you take the address of x, where x is a "const char *".
>
>You have that almost exactly backwards.  Perhaps you should use cdecl?
>
>cdecl> explain const char ** x;
>declare x as pointer to pointer to const char
>cdecl> explain char * const * x;
>declare x as pointer to const pointer to char
>cdecl> explain char ** const x;
>declare x as const pointer to pointer to char

okay, then i was right the first time when i said to myself that i
shouldn't speak up because i was probably confusing myself.

thanks.  :)

suffice it to say that you can't pass "&x" to a function that expects
"const char **", where x is a "char *".  ah...that's where the
confusing "char * const *" type pops up, which has const in the wrong
place (ie, the requisite one can be added, but the other can't be
removed).

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