Question

anyone knows why this does not work when I try to include a library with the following declarations:

namespace wincabase
{
  const char* SOMESTRING = "xx";
}

While this is perfectly fine:

namespace wincabase
{
  const int X = 30;
}

I get a “multiple definitions” error with gcc for the first case when I link the lib. Thanks!

Answer 1

const char* means pointer to const char. This means the pointer itself is not constant.

Hence it’s a normal variable, so you’d need to use

extern const char* SOMESTRING;

in the header file, and

const char* SOMESTRING = "xx";

in one compilation unit of the library.

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Alternatively, if it’s meant to be a const pointer to a const char, then you should use:

const char* const SOMESTRING = "xx";