Shriramana Sharma wrote:
> In Thinking in C++ chapter on overloading operators, Bruce Eckel gives
> the following code:
>
> For a non-member operator:
>
> int operator!(const Integer& a) {
> cout << "!Integer\n";
> return !a.i;
> }
>
> For a member operator:
>
> Byte operator!() const {
> cout << "!Byte\n";
> return Byte(!b);
> }
>
> My question is: why is there no "const" before Integer and Byte at the
> head of the function?
Huh? The only "Integer" which isn't preceded by "const" is in the
string literal.
> There's all that stuff about when temporaries are
> returned they are automatically const, but throughout the examples in
> this chapter, only operator! is not explicitly specified to have a const
> return value whereas in all other relevant cases we have the "const"
> specified explicitly.
Why would you want to make the return value "const"?
The situation is different if you're referring a reference or pointer,
but there's no point in making a copied value "const".
BTW, this list is specifically about C programming on Linux; generic
C/C++ questions aren't really on-topic here. The comp.lang.c and
comp.lang.c++ newsgroups (and their *.moderated counterparts) might be
better places to ask such questions; certainly, they are likely to
have many more active users.
--
Glynn Clements <glynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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