The Status of Const

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:46:51 -0400, Kagamin <spam at here.lot> wrote:

> Walter Bright Wrote:
>
>> Graham St Jack wrote:
>> > However, I still regard the language design decision of a class
>> > reference having the same constness as the object it refers to as a
>> > major language design problem.
>>
>> We tried for months. It just doesn't work to make it any other way than  
>> it is now.
>
> Is it compiler infrastructure's or syntactical issue?

Syntactical.  There is no way to separate the reference from the data,  
since the reference is a hidden artifact of the type system.

With pointers it is easy, you apply const to the data, and not the  
pointer.  With arrays, same thing.  I don't want to open up another  
discussion of how to do it, we tried and tried for months with different  
proposals, and nothing seemed very good.  The only thing which would work  
IMO is another const keyword.

-Steve