Re: GHashTable and const

[Alberto Mardegan <mardy users sourceforge net>]

ext Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is in the archives a bunch of times, for example the first google
> hit I got was
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2001-May/msg00485.html

Ah, sorry, I only researched about GHashTable.

> Whether you agree or not, the GLib types don't use const in their API,
> so if you try to use const yourself on these types you're just signing
> up for pain. It won't work well or do anything useful. (If _all_ the
> methods on an object are non-const, all the const keyword does is make
> you do a bunch of casts.)

While I tend to agree that const in C is of limited use, I find it a 
nice way to tell the users of an API not to modify/free certain data.
So, when I am the owner of a GHashTable and I'd like to have others 
access it in read-only mode, I'd use a const modifier on it.

On your past mail, you write that const is not useful in C, but on the 
other hand you don't write that it's harmful either.
If I proposed a patch which adds some "const" here and there, would that 
be discarded a priori, or would it undergo a serious consideration?

To put some more meat into the discussion, I point out that GValue's 
APIs make heavy use of the const modifier, and from the user point of 
view that's very helpful.

Ciao,
  Alberto

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