Absolutely NOT! It is perfectly reasonable to have the const in user code; WHENEVER a user uses a static string they should/must make it const Barry On Jun 24, 2008, at 3:19 PM, Satish Balay wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Barry Smith wrote:

...

I have pushed the change to PETSc-dev that eliminates the const from the definition of XXXType (for example VecType). In theory this should have minimal affects on your codes. The only change I think you may need are changing, for example,

VecType mt = MPIVEC;

to

const VecType mt = MPIVEC.

I think we can avoid this change to user-code - if we do the following:

#define VECMPI (char *)"mpi"

[I guess the tradeoff is slightly less rigorous const check by the compiler]

I tried this change with MatType - and looks like it requires a corresponding change of MatGetType() from:

MatGetType(Mat mat,const MatType *type) to MatGetType(Mat mat,MatType *type)

Satish