Any word on the return-type const syntax?

[Robert Fraser]

Janice Caron wrote:
> No, sorry - I figured out the problem. Invariant classes and invariant
> member functions make no sense. This was discussed in another thread
> somewhere, and Walter agreed.

Link? More than half of the classes I write are invariant after 
construction, and having the compiler be able to optimize that would be 
great (Java 6's HotSpot can, after all, without any special marking in 
the code).