diff --git a/Parser/tokenizer.c b/Parser/tokenizer.c
index f065962f288..f5c18e0acc6 100644
--- a/Parser/tokenizer.c
+++ b/Parser/tokenizer.c
@@ -585,7 +585,7 @@ decode_str(const char *str, struct tok_state *tok)
 {
 	PyObject* utf8 = NULL;
 	const char *s;
-	char *newl[2] = {NULL, NULL};
+	const char *newl[2] = {NULL, NULL};
 	int lineno = 0;
 	tok->enc = NULL;
 	tok->str = str;