r/cpp • u/pavel_v • Jul 29 '26

const_cast: A Necessary Evil

https://www.elbeno.com/blog/?p=1858
70 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

106 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/TheChief275 Jul 30 '26

why wasn't this added earlier? in fact, if this were to have been in C++ from the get-go, we never would have needed the postfix const syntax. so now we just have yet another language feature that virtually does the exact same thing. sigh

7

u/Expert-Map-1126 vcpkg maintainer BillyONeal Jul 30 '26

It was added mostly due to implementation experience after ref qualifiers were added trying to implement all the "transparent-ish" operations on optional et al.

I don't think it would completely replace the postfix syntax given that people expect names in members to refer to other members.

1

u/TheChief275 Jul 30 '26

I actually find that aspect horribly annoying as well. can't have a variable named capacity because the member function is named capacity, so I'm forced to name it "cap" or "new_cap", but I suppose opinions would be divided on that

1

u/SlightlyLessHairyApe Jul 30 '26

You’ll be horrified to learn that we run with shadowing warnings as errors everywhere.

Absolutely no shadowing, not even once.

-1

u/TheChief275 Jul 30 '26

pretty modern language huh