Transitive const sucks

[Bruce Adams]

Janice Caron Wrote:

[snip] 
> This just pulls the rug out from under:
> >
> > 1) functional programming
> 
> 
> Functional programming isn't possible anyway unless the function can also
> guarantee that it won't modify /global/ variables, and I see no way of
> specifying that in the prototype.
> 
> 
> 
> 2) multithreaded programming
> 
> 
> Likewise, a function cannot be guaranteed to be completely threadsafe unless
> it guarantees not to modify global variables, and I see no way of specifying
> that in the prototype.
> 
You obviously missed the discussion of the "pure" keyword, borrowed from Fortran-90 from the conference. This is a clear way of declaring that a function must not have any side-effects. Something I've long hoped to see in C++ too.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dconf2007/WalterAndrei.pdf

Regards,

Bruce.