On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 5:13 AM, Joe Perches <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 2014-03-20 at 12:03 +0000, Lee Jones wrote: >> > Good catch. That wasn't my intention. >> > > Why? >> An oversight. > > That's still not an explanation. > > Why, unless cast away by the code itself, is > const removal a good thing?
It's not so much removal as it is review of the initial driver merge. I'd contend that const was applied somewhat thoughtlessly originally, and it didn't really serve a good purpose. > It does serve as an indication to a reader what > the code does with the argument. > > About the only reason I can think of arguing in > favor of removal is inconsistent application of > const within the module. That's one good reason. And not only consistency within the modules, but consistency within the subsystem (and the kernel at large, really). There's rarely a case of a const function parameter. And I'm sure there are numerous function parameters which could potentially be marked 'const'. I also don't think that a function parameter is the right place to mark const like this. Function arguments are always pass-by-value, so this 'const' tells users (callers) nothing useful. It only provides useless constraints on what the function can do with its copy of the parameter. Brian -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [email protected] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
