Re: [groff] placement of const is _not_ a matter of style ...

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Mike,

You dropped the list.  That's fine if it were deliberate;  just
checking.

> > > >>   const char *foo;
> > > >>   char const *foo;
> > 
> > No, those two have identical meaning.
...
> These examples are found there.
> (( reformatted for emphasis ))
>
>         void Foo( int       *       ptr,
>                   int const *       ptrToConst,

The above `ptrToConst' is the second one I gave.

>                   int       * const constPtr,
>                   int const * const constPtrToConst )

None of the four are the first one I gave.

> const int *ptrToConst;     //identical to: int const *ptrToConst,

The above is the first one I gave.  The comment claims it is identical
to my second.  I think you're having an off-day of word blindness here.
:-)

Just to make certain we're arguing about the same thing, I'm talking C
here, not C++.  I've no idea whether C++ is the same or different in
this respect, and don't wish to learn.  :-)

> Please note that I am not trying to pick a fight here.

No, me neither.  But there's no harm in first working out why we
disagree, even if we then agree to disagree.

>       Is there a path by which the confusions such as these can be
>       avoided in the design and implementation of C-like language?

Yes, don't allow two alternatives, only one.  Unfortunately,
standardisation arrived too late, but going forward `const after' is
consistent and logical, as I explain in one of my list emails with the
sed and awk showing six varieties.

If you like C, you'll like Go.  Its `const' is for constants and they
can be typed, `const foo int64 = 42', or untyped, `const pi =
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307'.
(I do hope I told bc(1) to do that right.)  The untyped ones are
rounded, etc., when actually used for a type, e.g. `var i int = pi //
3'.  This allows them to have higher precision than any native type.
https://golang.org/ref/spec#Constant_declarations

Cheers, Ralph.