Learning to Program in C++

Initial Here

This is another of the places where it's important to differentiate between initialization and assignment. We can't assign a value to a const, but we can initialize it; in fact, because an uninitialized const is useless, the attempt to define a const without specifying its initial value is a compile-time error. In this case, we're initializing it to the value 256; if we just wrote const short BUFLEN;, we'd get an error something like the one in Figure 8.31 when we tried to compile it.

Figure 8.31. Error from an uninitialized const (code\string5x.out)

Susan wanted some further explanation.

Susan: I still don't get why const is ...