CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cconstantsreturn-type
Amith
Amith

Reputation: 76

What are the uses of making a C function's return type as const?

I need to know the advantages that a programmer has by making a function return type as 'const' qualified in C. This question is not related to C++.

Following function signature is a valid C function signature, so the creators allowed it keeping some use case in mind, which I cannot find anywhere in web.

const int foo(int arg);

I know in C++ it has a lot of uses to make returned objects immutable or read-only because there can be accidental assignments to returned object.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 166

Answers (2)

gsamaras
gsamaras

Reputation: 73366

const makes no sense for return values because return values are rvalues in any case and can't be modified.

Src.

An exception: const T* can be useful, since it mentions that the object the pointer is pointing to is constant, and the user of the function should respect that.

Upvotes: 4

JiaHao Xu
JiaHao Xu

Reputation: 2748

Consider the following case:

const char* F() {
    return " aaaaaaaaa. Ddddd";
}

Upvotes: -3

Related Questions