Can you make a variable const after its declaration?

Didn't find anything about this on Google. Is there no way to make a variable const after its declaration?

For example I want to run a program get the value of a variable at the beginning and make the variable const thereon so it will not be modified by the program.

In C++ that's not possible, so you'd have to create a new variable and assign to that (or a const&). If you query the user, you might want to consider something like this:

Code:

---

UserData query_user()
{
    UserData ud;
    // (...)
    return ud;
}

int main()
{
    const auto user_data = query_user();
}

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But remember that that runtime "const" is not the same as a compile time const required for array sizes and the like.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Guest

In C++ that's not possible, so you'd have to create a new variable and assign to that (or a const&). If you query the user, you might want to consider something like this:

Code:

---

UserData query_user()
{
    UserData ud;
    // (...)
    return ud;
}

int main()
{
    const auto user_data = query_user();
}

---

---

I wanted to know if global variables who get values at run-time, once, can become const after getting their values. Thx anyways. Somebody needs to propose run-time constness.

If your concern is for global variables in particular, then you can achieve this by using some variation of the singleton pattern in which the function providing the single global point of access returns a pointer or reference to const.

I didn't understand a word. But are you talking about having a class with static member?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nwb

I didn't understand a word. But are you talking about having a class with static member?

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It sounds like you need to read up then: I'm not going to explain the singleton pattern here when you could have googled it. It is hardly an obscure concept, especially since it has plenty of criticism in its usual form.

The thing is that you apparently are not satisfied with doing this at file scope, even though it satisfies both "get the value of a variable at the beginning and make the variable const thereon" and your requirement for it to be global:

Code:

---

const auto user_data = query_user();

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This is reasonable though: query_user presumably should query the user at some point after program startup, whereas initialisation of user_data should happen at program startup (which might be acceptable for reading from a configuration file rather than querying the user). So, what I suggested is that you should be able to adapt some implementation of the singleton pattern to approximate this, i.e., by making sure that access will only result in a const reference or pointer to const, while allowing for the object to be populated well after program startup, perhaps at the time of first access (because the singleton class can control how that is to be done, just like it can control the very existence of one and only one object).