Inherited member( void )const - const to be or not to be

[Eljay Love-Jensen]

Hi Jarmo,

 >name__more is not reserved.

Yes it is.  ISO 14882 section 17.4.3.1.2.

 >Usage of _Name is not recomended, but what I know not reserved.

Yes it is.  ISO 14882 section 17.4.3.1.2.

 >Do you have any link to a list of which combinations are reserved and 
which are not?

Only by citing the section in the ISO 14882 standard.  Note:  I'm referring 
to the 1998 one.  I don't have the revised standard.

 >NO! You _broke_ it! Now you return a pointer to constant, and thats _NOT_ 
what I wanted.

g++ -DCONST= foo.cpp

Then neither the pointer returned, nor the up-cast function are committing 
to const protection.

 >The question was more about cast from "this", like this:

Do this then:

virtual CProvider* getProvider() const { return const_cast<CProvider*>(this); }

Note:  on my team, this code would not be acceptable in a code 
review.  Very dangerous.  If you REALLY have to have a non-const futzing, 
consider putting the functionality IN the class itself, so the class can 
manipulate its own internal state in a "non-const" fashion via a const 
method, yet retain logically const state.  Otherwise, it's an egregious 
violation of the const contract.

 >I do not agree as thats not portable across all compilers.

It is portable across all C++ compilers that I use, and I use quite a few 
different ones on a wide variety of platforms.  It may not be portable 
across some very old compilers.

It's also portable across all C++ compliant compilers.  But that's not 
saying much, because I don't think there are any fully ISO 14882 compliant 
compilers available.  (Hmmm, maybe EDG is fully compliant, I'm not sure.)  :-)

Sincerely,
--Eljay