possible const problem, mvwprintw

[D. Stimits]

I came up with an interesting dilemma, under ncurses 5.3-4 (RPM package, 
RH 7.3).

The prototype in /usr/include/curses.h (a sym link to 
/usr/include/ncurses/curses.h) for mvwprintw() has argument 4 properly 
prototyped as "const char *". However, when I pass a truly const char* 
as this argument, I get an error (I'm actually using g++ with extern "C" 
wrapper, many C compilers probably won't burp on it unless the const 
char* is actually modified...i.e., at runtime, or possibly if set by 
compile flag to act strictly in such cases). The error tells me it can't 
convert my const char* to char*, as if the function mvwprintw had been 
declared with non-const argument 4.

When I look at /usr/include/ncurses/curses.h, argument 4 is declared 
const, so I can't at first see how this error is happening. However, it 
looks like "under the covers" this is really a macro, and in 
llib-lncursesw, it has this:
#undef mvwprintw
int     mvwprintw(
                WINDOW  *win,
                int     y,
                int     x,
                char    *fmt,
                ...)
                { return(*(int *)0); }

Apparently mvwprintw is initially a macro. The file naming seems odd to 
me, I'd expect a .c or .h. Well, the conclusion here is that the fmt 
argument, in this file, is inappropriately changed back from const to 
non-const. In fact, there are a lot of non-const char* fmt lines in that 
file. How is this non-.c/non-.h file being used? Is awk or some other 
tool writing other files after scanning this one? Can these non-const 
char* fmt arguments be patched to use const char*? Or am I looking at 
something completely irrelevant as the cause to rejecting const char* in 
mvwprintw as the fmt?

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com