Re: Don't cast away const where possible

From: Bertrand Drouvot <bertranddrouvot(dot)pg(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter(at)eisentraut(dot)org>
Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Don't cast away const where possible
Date: 2025-12-29 09:01:46
Message-ID: aVJDegDFOPfaG87M@ip-10-97-1-34.eu-west-3.compute.internal
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Hi,

On Mon, Dec 22, 2025 at 12:53:03PM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On 18.12.25 14:55, Bertrand Drouvot wrote:
> > Some functions are casting away the const qualifiers from their signatures in
> > local variables.
>
> @@ -1304,8 +1304,8 @@ merge_overlapping_ranges(FmgrInfo *cmp, Oid colloid,
> static int
> compare_distances(const void *a, const void *b)
> {
> - DistanceValue *da = (DistanceValue *) a;
> - DistanceValue *db = (DistanceValue *) b;
> + const DistanceValue *da = (const DistanceValue *) a;
> + const DistanceValue *db = (const DistanceValue *) b;
>
> I wonder if the better fix here wouldn't be to get rid of the cast. It's not
> necessary, and without it the compiler would automatically warn about
> qualifier mismatches.

Yeah, that looks better as it provides an extra safety check should the function
signature change.

> These comparison functions seem to be a common
> pattern.

Right, in the attached I applied your proposal on all those places.

Regards,

--
Bertrand Drouvot
PostgreSQL Contributors Team
RDS Open Source Databases
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com

Attachment Content-Type Size
v2-0001-Don-t-cast-away-const-where-possible.patch text/x-diff 5.9 KB
v2-0002-Add-const-to-read-only-TableInfo-pointers-in-pg_d.patch text/x-diff 3.6 KB
v2-0003-Separate-read-and-write-pointers-in-pg_saslprep.patch text/x-diff 1.8 KB

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