Extended Type Design.

[Joel C. Salomon]

Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
>> How about “const const”?  No new keywords, no reuse of keywords in 
>> disparate contexts, and equally noticeable to the eye.
> 
> It was on the plate briefly. Probably it would be an uphill battle to 
> convince people to enjoy it.

I’m still kinda shaky on the question of why the various extra 
specifiers are needed.  If a variable is being declared “const” ought to 
mean nobody can change it, if it’s a function parameter it’s a promise 
that the function won’t change it.  How vital is it that the language 
express “put this in read-only memory” as opposed to “don’t put this in 
read-only memory, but complain if I try to change it”?  Why should a 
function care if it got a pointer to read-only memory or if it just 
promised not to alter the value?

For numeric constants that don’t need addresses, I’d suggest “define” 
rather than “final”, as in:
	define float PI = 3.14159;
If the “#if” syntax for “static if” is adopted, I might even suggest 
“#define”, just to make it clear that something is happening at 
compile-time rather than run-time.

--Joel