Arrays and use of const

[Cornot2C]

I am trying to understand the use of const. I understand that const is used to keep data from being changed. What I don,t understand is how you can use const with values that are not initailly known.
For example, If I have a list of values that I read in from a file and I create an array declared as

double list[SIZE] = {'\0'};

and I want to protect that data by making it

const double list[specific length read in]

.

Can I do this? AND Can you do it without pointers?

Is the only way to use const in this manner by initilizing the values with const?

[Magos]

The thing with const is that the values must be known at compile time which is not the case if you read them from a file. I'm sure const is more of an optimization thingy rather than protection as you could always do a const_cast to modify the data :P.

Initializing an array is done like this:

const double x[] =
{
  1.2,
  3.4,
  5.6
};