Hello,
Can someone, please, comment on the following curious fact that I encountered in C (actually, I use gcc, which has the default language Gnu C): If one writes

const int a=10;
const int b=a;

one gets an error indication at the declaration of b (not constant!). I would be particularly interested in knowing whether there is a way of getting around this (i.e. declaring a const with a previously declared const). I was actually surprised by this since, I think, C++ allows it.
Regards,
bostjanv

Off the top of my head, the C standards don't disallow that code in any way. Further, my tests with gcc don't mesh with your results. Please post a complete compilable example and the full compiler output including your instantiation of gcc.

Thanks for your reply. Here are my results. I'm using gcc 4.7.2 on Debian 7

Thanks for your reply. Here are my results. I'm using gcc 4.7.2 on Debian 7. I ran the following file (test.c)

===================================

const int a=10;
const int b=a;

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
}

===================================

and the result was as follows:

===================================
bostjan@wwpecker-5-deb:~/workspace/OB2/src$ cc -c -o test.o test.c
test.c:3:1: error: initializer element is not constant

b

I hope I can clear this up.
Regards,
bostjanv

Yes, the variable 'a' is const (you cannot change it), but the VALUE of the variable is a standard scalar value, which is not necessarily const. You need to cast the value to a const, as in:

const int b = (const int)a;

I agree that this should not be required, and it may be a bug in gcc 4.7.2. Have you asked the user forums at GNU for GCC about this?

This has nothing to do with const. If you remove the const keyword from your program, you'll get the same error.

The problem is that the initializer for a global variable must be a constant. Confusingly the meaning of the word "constant" here has nothing to do with the const keyword. Here "constant" means either a literal (something like 5, 'c' or "hello") or the application of an operator where all operands are constants. So something like 3 + 5 would be okay, but 3 + x or just x would not be.

Basically the initializer of a global variable must not depend on the value of any other variable or function.

Hello,
I checked the suggestion made by rubberman [const int b = (const in)a;], and the result was the same (error). Therefore, the interpretation given by sepp2k is probably right. However, I will verify that in the gcc forum, and reply when I obtain an answer.
Regards,
bostjanv

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