Question

I want my function to return an array of objects. But i want some restriction on returned reference so that returned value/reference is not modified by caller.

Eg

class A
{
    B **arrB;

    public :
        A() 
        {
            initialize arrB 
        }
        B** getB()
        {
           return arrB;
        }
}

In above code, array returned by getB() function, should not be modified.
Can someone suggest best way to do this ?
Can "const" help?

Answer 1

Yes it will help. But then you will get an error about illegal conversion from B ** to const B **, but that is the reason for const_cast:

const B** getB() const
{
    return const_cast<const B**>(arrB);
}

Note that I added an extra const qualifier after the function declaration. This tells the compiler that the function does not modify anything in the class.