C++ deprecated conversion from string constant to 'char*'

Question

I have a class with a private char str[256];

and for it I have an explicit constructor:

explicit myClass(const char *func)
{
    strcpy(str,func);
}

I call it as:

myClass obj("example");

When I compile this I get the following warning:

deprecated conversion from string constant to 'char*'

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

This is an error message you see whenever you have a situation like the following:

char* pointer_to_nonconst = "string literal";

Why? Well, C and C++ differ in the type of the string literal. In C the type is array of char and in C++ it is constant array of char. In any case, you are not allowed to change the characters of the string literal, so the const in C++ is not really a restriction but more of a type safety thing. A conversion from const char* to char* is generally not possible without an explicit cast for safety reasons. But for backwards compatibility with C the language C++ still allows assigning a string literal to a char* and gives you a warning about this conversion being deprecated.

So, somewhere you are missing one or more consts in your program for const correctness. But the code you showed to us is not the problem as it does not do this kind of deprecated conversion. The warning must have come from some other place.