Why do compilers allow string literals not to be const?

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The C standard does not forbid the modification of string literals. It just says that the behaviour is undefined if the attempt is made. According to the C99 rationale, there were people in the committee who wanted string literals to be modifiable, so the standard does not explicitly forbid it.

Note that the situation is different in C++. In C++, string literals are arrays of const char. However, C++ allows conversions from const char * to char *. That feature has been deprecated, though.

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