Example of impossibility of patching C++ string literal after compiler do his job

gistfile1.txt

> cat boo.cpp

// function will return some enum with information about resources
int have_resources_in_install() {
  // want to patch this string AFTER compile stage done
  const char* path = "non empty string";

  if (path[0] != '\0') {
    return 0x123;
  }
  else {
    // expecting move to this branch after patching
    return 0xabc;
  }
}

> g++ -O3 ./boo.cpp -c -o boo

> objdump -d ./boo

0000000000000000 <_Z25have_resources_in_installv>:
   0:  b8 23 01 00 00    mov  $0x123,%eax // as you can see branch with '0xabc' optimized away and will
                                          // never be executed even if you patch literal
   5:  c3                retq