Thread: Why do I want a const modifier on pass-by-reference?

int increment(const int& myvalue);

I'm considering here the apparent uselessness (If I don't want my argument to be changed, why did I declared a reference to it in the first place?)

Since not everything is what it seems at first glance (certainly not in C/C++), I started to think of the possible reasons of why would I want to do such a thing.

I came up with the following:
Pass-by-reference avoids the waste of creating space in memory to accomodate a copy of the variable passed to a function (which is what happens on a pass-by-value). So, maybe the above can be useful if the argument to be referenced is a big one (memory-wise). This way I save memory while the function is running, since no copy of the variable was created. Just a reference to its memory location. Big arrays of strings , objects and multi-dimensional arrays are candidates here.

My question is, is this right? Or am I overlooking yet some other advantage?

Yeah I think so, when you pass by value a copy constructor is created, but when you pass by reference this isn't the case, as far as I know.

Well you are right. If I have a huge class I need to pass to a function I don't want to create a copy so I send it by reference which you already know.

/* Prototype #1 */
bool Foo( MyClass & );

Anyways, the const comes in because I want to make absolutely sure that my function does not tamper with MyClass. This is something that needs to be taken in account when you pass by reference, that if you actually change something in MyClass it changes it for good. So I use the const keyword to indicate I don't want to change the value, just get some values from the Class perhaps.

/* Prototype #2 */
bool Foo( const MyClass & );

Hopefully that helped clear up something.

--MrWizard

Originally posted by MrWizard
Hopefully that helped clear up something.

Thanks both.

Yes, it did. Problem with these books nowadays is that they explain what things are but fail to either explain why things are that way or give real life examples.

The learning process is much easier if one can relate what he learns with true practice. Hence the learn by example method being one of the most successful.

Anyway, don't mind my ranting... Thanks again.