9.5.1 Structure and Union Qualifiers

The MPLAB XC-DSC C Compiler supports the use of type qualifiers on structures. When a qualifier is applied to a structure, all of its members will inherit this qualification. In the following example, the structure is qualified const.

   const struct foo {
     int number;
     int *ptr;
   } record = { 0x55, &i };

In this case, the entire structure may be placed into the program space where each member will be read-only. Remember that all members are usually initialized if a structure is const as they cannot be initialized at runtime.

If the members of the structure were individually qualified const, but the structure was not, then the structure would be positioned into RAM, but each member would be still be read-only. Compare the following structure with the one above.

   struct {
     const int number;
     int * const ptr;
   } record = { 0x55, &i};