> I would like to query the wisdom of having the declaration

> #if !defined(_POSIX_SOURCE) && !defined(_ANSI_SOURCE)
> extern const char *const sys_errlist[];
> #endif

> in [stdio.h].  It seems to me that this [...poses] a gratuitous
> problem for ``old'' code which won't know about `const' and will thus
> get a compilation error when it declares `sys_errlist' for itself.

Yes.

> This argument suggests that the `const' keywords should be dropped
> from this declaration.

Personally, I like it the way it is.  The compilation "error" is really
only a warning, and it is a good way to find old code that uses
sys_errlist[].  You can always ignore the warning if you don't want to
fix the code, after all.

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu