const

[Walter Bright]

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Surely you aren't suggesting that the English language consists entirely of
> four words, all which have the same meaning?  That aside, my point was
> that I find it somewhat troubling that you feel this way and yet still chose
> the keywords that we have now.  Surely, a language should prefer a literal
> representation which accurately describes the underlying concept being
> symbolized.  If you actually felt that 'const' and 'invariant' had distinct
> meanings which were appropriate for the underlying concepts then I'd
> feel more at ease, even if I didn't agree.

But there aren't any such words - what word means "read only view, but 
others can modify the value" ? "readonly" isn't it, as that commonly 
means in embedded systems "nobody can write it" and has been used as a 
storage class to mean just that in embedded systems languages.