Question

Visual Studio c++ 2005

I am getting an error on the last line of this code.

int Utils::GetLengthDiff ( const char * input, int & num_subst ) 
{
    int num_wide = 0, diff = 0 ; 
    const char * start_ptr = input ; 

    num_subst = 0 ; 
    while ( ( start_ptr = strstr ( start_ptr, enc_start ) ) != NULL ) 
    {
        char * end_ptr = strstr ( start_ptr, enc_end ); // Error

So I changed the line to this and it worked ok

const char * end_ptr = strstr ( start_ptr, enc_end ); 

So why would I need to declare end_ptr as a const as well?

Many thanks,

Answer 1

C++ has two overloaded versions of this function. http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstring/strstr/

const char * strstr ( const char * str1, const char * str2 );
      char * strstr (       char * str1, const char * str2 );

Since your start_ptr is const char * the C++ compiler resolves to call the version that takes a const char * as the first parameter, that version also returns a const char *, so you have to change your return value to match.