Linxutopia - Thinking in C++ - 11: References & the Copy-Constructor

Thinking in C++
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const references

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The reference argument in Reference.cpp works only when the argument is a non-const object. If it is a const object, the function g( ) will not accept the argument, which is actually a good thing, because the function does modify the outside argument. If you know the function will respect the constness of an object, making the argument a const reference will allow the function to be used in all situations. This means that, for built-in types, the function will not modify the argument, and for user-defined types, the function will call only const member functions, and won’t modify any public data members.

The use of const references in function arguments is especially important because your function may receive a temporary object . This might have been created as a return value of another function or explicitly by the user of your function. Temporary objects are always const, so if you don’t use a const reference, that argument won’t be accepted by the compiler. As a very simple example,

//: C11:ConstReferenceArguments.cpp
// Passing references as const

void f(int&) {}
void g(const int&) {}

int main() {
//!  f(1); // Error
  g(1);
} ///:~

The call to f(1) causes a compile-time error because the compiler must first create a reference. It does so by allocating storage for an int, initializing it to one and producing the address to bind to the reference. The storage must be a const because changing it would make no sense – you can never get your hands on it again. With all temporary objects you must make the same assumption: that they’re inaccessible. It’s valuable for the compiler to tell you when you’re changing such data because the result would be lost information.

Thinking in C++
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