Question

I know this has been asked a lot, but the only answers I could find was when the const-ness was actually casted away using (int*) or similar. Why isn’t the const qualifier working on pointer type member variables on const objects when no cast is involved?

#include <iostream>

class bar {
public:
    void doit()       { std::cout << "    bar::doit() non-const\n"; }
    void doit() const { std::cout << "    bar::doit() const\n"; }
};

class foo {
    bar* mybar1;
    bar mybar2;
public:
    foo() : mybar1(new bar) {}
    void doit() const {
        std::cout << "foo::doit() const\n";
        std::cout << "  calling mybar1->doit()\n";
        mybar1->doit();  // This calls bar::doit() instead of bar::doit() const
        std::cout << "  calling mybar2.doit()\n";
        mybar2.doit(); // This calls bar::doit() const correctly
    }
    // ... (proper copying elided for brevity)
};

int main(void)
{
    const foo foobar;  // NOTE: foobar is const
    foobar.doit();
}

The code above yields the following output (tested in gcc 4.5.2 and vc100):

foo::doit() const
  calling mybar1->doit()
    bar::doit() non-const         <-- Why ?
  calling mybar2.doit()
    bar::doit() const

Answer 1

When a foo instance is const, its data members are const too, but this applies differently for pointers than you might at first think:

struct A {
  int *p;
};

A const obj;

The type of obj.p is int * const, not int const *; that is, a constant pointer to int, not a pointer to constant int.

For another way to look at it, let’s start with a function:

template<class T>
T const& const_(T const &x) {
  return x;
}

Now imagine we have an A instance, and we make it const. You can imagine that as applying const_ on each data member.

A nc;
// nc.p has type int*.
typedef int *T;  // T is the type of nc.p.

T const &p_when_nc_is_const = const_(nc.p);
// "T const" is "int * const".

const T &be_wary_of_where_you_place_const = const_(nc.p);
// "const T" is "int * const".
// "const T" is *not* "const int *".

The variable be_wary_of_where_you_place_const shows that “adding const” is not the same as prepending “const” to the literal text of a type.