Re: legal use of const?
On Apr 12, 10:36 pm, Comp1...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
On Apr 12, 6:17 pm, woodbria...@gmail.com wrote:
On Apr 12, 5:50 am, James Kanze <james.ka...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Apr 12, 1:12 am, c...@mailvault.com wrote:
On Apr 10, 4:35 am, James Kanze <james.ka...@gmail.com> wrote:
Exactly. In general, the use of the const in the
declaration is frowned upon, because it doesn't mean
anything, and because it has no signification for the
client.
What if it's a reference to a type?
I presume you mean "a reference type"---references can
only be to objects or to functions, not to types. In that
case, the const is illegal, so the question doesn't occur.
(We're talking of top level const here. Obviously, char
const* or SomeType const& is perfectly acceptable.)
Say someone wants to marshall a vector<string>. I was
wondering if you're saying a function declaration should be
bool Send(vector<string>&);
or
bool Send(vector<string> const&);
In my opinion the const is helpful to have in the
declaration even if it isn't required. So I'm not sure what
you meant by the words "in general."
Well, the discussion was about const objects, not const
references.
James was talking about functions whose parameters are const
objects, and you're talking about a function with a const
reference parameter -- a very different situation. You don't
see a declaration like void f (const int); very often --
that's (part of) James's point.
Fundamentally, the issue is one of top level const in a function
parameter. If the parameter has reference type, then it isn't
an object, and the top level const is illegal (since references
are always const)---you can't write something like:
bool
Send( std::vector< std::string > const& const ) ;
--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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