Question

According to my small tests this code works. But, does it have undefined behaviour? Modifying the const object through the use of const_cast resulted in run-time access violations in my previous tests, but I can’t remember how they were different. So, is there fundamentally something wrong here or not?

// test.h
#pragma once
#include <boost/array.hpp>

typedef boost::array<int,100000> bigLut_t;
extern const bigLut_t constBigLut;

---

// test.cpp
#include "test.h"

bigLut_t& initializeConstBigLut()
{
    bigLut_t* pBigLut = const_cast<bigLut_t*>( &constBigLut );

    for(int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i) {
        pBigLut->at(i) = i;
    }
    return const_cast<bigLut_t&>(constBigLut);
}

const bigLut_t constBigLut = initializeConstBigLut();

---

// const_test.cpp
#include <iostream>
#include "test.h"

void main()
{
    for(int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
        std::cout << constBigLut[i] << std::endl;
    }
    system("pause");
}

(Notice that sizeof(bigLut_t) is too much to fit into the stack.)

EDIT:
I actually like the idea in ybungalobill’s small comment best for a method of initializing these big objects:

// test.h
#pragma once
#include <boost/array.hpp>

extern const struct BigLut : public boost::array<int,100000> {
    BigLut();
} constBigLut;

---

// test.cpp
#include "test.h"

const BigLut constBigLut;
BigLut::BigLut()
{
    for(int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i) {
        this->at(i) = i;
    }
}

Answer 1

You modify an object defined as const. It doesn’t matter when you do it, during initialization or not, it’s still undefined behavior. Removing constness with const_cast is defined only if the const pointer was obtained from a non-const pointer to that object at some earlier stage. That’s not your case.

The best thing you can do is

const bigLut_t& initializeConstBigLut()
{
    static bigLut_t bigLot;

    for(int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i) {
        bigLut.at(i) = i;
    }
    return bigLut;
}

const bigLut_t constBigLut = initializeConstBigLut();

and hopefully the compiler will optimize out the static temporary.