Bill Birrell wrote in a message to Tom Torfs:

 BB>     [storage of const objects]

 > Probably because it isn't true :-)

 BB>     But it is true, Tom, under certain circumstances which John may
 BB> well have taken for granted. See 6.5.3 note 97 of the standard.

 BB> "97  The implementation may place a const object that is not
 BB> volatile in a read-only region of storage. Moreover, the
 BB> implementation need not allocate storage for such an object if its
 BB> address is never used."

Yes, that's a footnote, which may explain why I overlooked it. So I learned
something new today :-)

 BB>     So John is not wrong there. An identifier type-qualified as
 BB> const *in C* does NOT require storage space unless its address is
 BB> used.

Make that "_may_ not require storage space" and I'll agree.
Assuming this will always happen is definitely not a good idea. So if you
want to be sure that your constants don't take up any space, you should
still use #define.

greetings,
Tom
tomtorfs{at}village.uunet.be

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