Peter Alexander wrote:
Solves the problem, but now I've created a new one: getInverse now has
complete write access to my matrix, so when I do something as harmless as:
Matrix inv = getInverse(myMatrix);
This innocent call has now lost the guarantee that myMatrix will come
out unmodified.
Carefully examining C++ const reveals that it offers no protection at all
against legally modifying a supposedly const type. It's so bad that the DMC++
optimizer completely ignores const, and relies on data flow analysis instead.
Const in C++ offers some level of type checking, but beyond that it's more of a
convention than a static guarantee. In fact, "logical constness" is a fraud
anyway because the underlying data isn't constant at all, one is completely
relying on convention. There's nothing at all preventing a supposedly
logical-const-correct function from returning a different value every time it is
called, and no way for the compiler to detect this.
D's const is meant to provide static guarantees, not an unverifiable convention.
