Re: omission in draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-c-api-03.txt section 27.1

[mcs@netscape.com (Mark C Smith)]

Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:
> 
> Mark Smith writes:
> >   The prototype for ber_peek_tag was changed -- 'const' was added in
> >   front of the ber parameter to indicate that API implementations
> >   are not allowed to alter the contents of the BerElement when
> >   executing the peek tag call.
> 
> Nitpick:
> 
> I think it's unwise to make opaque types 'const' (in ber_flatten and
> ber_keep_tag): it makes it harder for the library to do internal
> bookkeeping.  Example: The library might want to store huge BerElements
> in files.  At the first access, an element's file would be opened and
> the file descriptor would be stored in the BerElement.  You can kludge
> around this with
>     typedef struct berelement {
>         struct {
>             ...real meat of BerElement...
>         } *contents;
>     } BerElement;
> but I don't think a mere 'const' is worth it.

(Sorry for the delayed response; this comment slipped through the cracks
in my busy inbox).  After thinking about this a bit and consulting with
a couple of other implementors, I agree and believe we should remove
'const' from the BerElement parameters in the prototypes for
ber_peek_tag() and ber_flatten().

-- 
Mark Smith
Directory Architect / Sun-Netscape Alliance
My words are my own, not my employer's.  Got LDAP?