Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dptg!att!cbnewsl!dog
From: dog@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (edward.n.schiebel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Const member function semantics
Message-ID: <1221@cbnewsl.ATT.COM>
Date: 24 Jul 89 13:46:05 GMT
References: <9662@alice.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 12

From article <9662@alice.UUCP>, by ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig):
> Well, you can use a cast to remove the constness of `this'
> if you insist.  Opinions are divided, however, about whether
> such an operation should always be guaranteed to work.
> -- 
I would be very sad to see this removed.  I have const member functions
which do not change the external view of an object, but do manipulate
some internal state information.  For what its worth, I feel the user
of a class should view a const object as constant from her perspective,
not from a storage in memory point of view.

	- Ed Schiebel