Re: const warning...

[Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs dot mu dot OZ dot AU>]

On 05-Jul-2003, Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
> > Adding "const" on local variable definitions that happen to only be set
> > once is not especially useful for documentation or maintenance purposes.
> 
> I disagree strongly. The difference between constants and variables is
> important and fundamental.

Well, yes and no.  Sometimes it is important, but other times it is not.
I agree that it can be useful, I just don't think that it is especially
useful, and sometimes the advantage of the extra information can be
outweighed by the distracting noise factor of the explicit "const"
declaration in C/C++.

Whether or not a variable can be declared "const" can depend on where
the variable is declared.  Consider for example

	void print_squares(void) {
		int i;
		int sqr_i;
		for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
			sqr_i = i * i;
			printf("%d squared is %d\n", i, sqr_i);
		}
	}

versus

	void print_squares(void) {
		int i;
		for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
			const int sqr_i = i * i;
			printf("%d squared is %d\n", i, sqr_i);
		}
	}

If you are arguing that there is a fundamental and important difference
between these two code snippets, then I would beg to differ.  There is
a difference, certainly, but I don't find it especially important.
While I agree that it is better style to declare variables in their
closest enclosing scope, I wouldn't say that it makes such a *fundamental*
difference to the code if you instead declare them at the top of the function.

> One of the problems with C++ (and Ada for
> that matter) is that they require extra syntax for constants which tends
> to encourage the use of variables by default.

I agree with you about the language design issue.
But in C/C++, I find that the noise factor from declaring every
unchanging parameter or local variable "const" is quite large,
especially since most C/C++ programs are not written this way.

In Ada it is not so bad since parameters can't be assigned to
(i.e. they are always implicitly const or const reference).

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne         |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.