October 2004
Intermediate to advanced
240 pages
6h 22m
English
book
C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices
by Herb Sutter, Andrei Alexandrescu
Content preview from C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices
94. Avoid casting away
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94. Avoid casting away const
Summary
Some fibs are punishable: Casting away const sometimes results in undefined behavior, and it is a staple of poor programming style even when legal.
Discussion
Once you go const, you (should) never go back. If you cast away const on an object whose original definition really did define it to be const, all bets are off and you are in undefined behavior land. For example, compilers can (and do) put constant data into ROM or write-protected RAM pages. Casting away const from such a truly const object is a punishable lie, and often manifests as a memory fault.
Even when it doesn’t crash your program, casting away const is a broken promise and doesn’t do what many expect. For example, this doesn’t allocate a ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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