How to get rid of `deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’` warnings in GCC?

user_3830 0
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So I'm working on an exceedingly large codebase, and recently upgraded to gcc 4.3, which now triggers this warning:

warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’

Obviously, the correct way to fix this is to find every declaration like

char *s = "constant string";

or function call like:

void foo(char *s);
foo("constant string");

and make them const char pointers. However, that would mean touching 564 files, minimum, which is not a task I wish to perform at this point in time. The problem right now is that I'm running with -werror, so I need some way to stifle these warnings. How can I do that?

gcc c++ string
23 Answers

I believe passing -Wno-write-strings to gcc will suppress this warning.

Denton_Gentry_47610

I had a similar problem, I solved it like this:

#include <string.h>

extern void foo(char* m);

int main() {
    // warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’
    //foo("Hello");

    // no more warning
    char msg[] = "Hello";
    foo(msg);
}

Is this an appropriate way of solving this? I do not have access to foo to adapt it to accept const char*, although that would be a better solution (because foo does not change m).

user_20970
Rob_Walker_36310

If it's an active code base, you might still want to upgrade the code base. Of course, performing the changes manually isn't feasible but I believe that this problem could be solved once and for all by one single sed command. I haven't tried it, though, so take the following with a grain of salt.

find . -exec sed -E -i .backup -n \
    -e 's/char\s*\*\s*(\w+)\s*= "/char const* \1 = "/g' {} \;

This might not find all places (even not considering function calls) but it would alleviate the problem and make it possible to perform the few remaining changes manually.

user_19680

Test string is const string. So you can solve like this:

char str[] = "Test string";

or:

const char* str = "Test string";
printf(str);
user_2955600

Why not just use type casting?

(char*) "test"
user_5501070

Why don't you use the -Wno-deprecated option to ignore deprecated warning messages?

Admin1

You can also create a writable string from a string constant by calling strdup().

For instance, this code generates a warning:

putenv("DEBUG=1");

However, the following code does not (it makes a copy of the string on the heap before passing it to putenv):

putenv(strdup("DEBUG=1"));

In this case (and perhaps in most others) turning off the warning is a bad idea -- it's there for a reason. The other alternative (making all strings writable by default) is potentially inefficient.

Listen to what the compiler is telling you!

user_691580

While passing string constants to functions write it as:

void setpart(const char name[]);

setpart("Hello");

instead of const char name[], you could also write const char \*name

It worked for me to remove this error:

[Warning] deprecated conversion from string constant to 'char*' [-Wwrite-strings]
user_134589060

The problem right now is that I'm running with -Werror

This is your real problem, IMO. You can try some automated ways of moving from (char *) to (const char *) but I would put money on them not just working. You will have to have a human involved for at least some of the work. For the short term, just ignore the warning (but IMO leave it on, or it'll never get fixed) and just remove the -Werror.

user_103140
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