> [...Greg Woods rehashing of the same old positions again...]

Your conceptual const appears to amount to "read-only storage", and as
such is tied only loosely to the actual C const qualifier.  You appear
to want a language in which the compiler prevents you from doing
anything that could ever possibly lead to your writing into read-only
storage.  C is not such a language; its design philosophy is to permit
the programmer to use tools like const to help the programming process,
but not to turn them into straitjackets.  If you really want the sort
of no-escape discipline you seem to think const should provide, you
would probably be happier with some other language.  In any case, I
cannot see why you make such a point of trying to fit C as used by
other people into your vision of what a language should be; it isn't
such a language and won't be.  You can, sort of, make it into one by
refusing to let yourself use the escape hatches the language provides;
you, if you have to use C, probably would want to.  Other people don't,
and I don't see what bothers you so much about that.  Other people
write in lots of languages (starting with assembler!) that don't
provide the guarantees you seem to find so essential, yet you don't
(seem to) get all torqued up about that; why over C?

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