Question

I’m adding some lazy initialization logic to a const method, which makes the method in fact not const. Is there a way for me to do this without having to remove the ‘const’ from the public interface?

int MyClass::GetSomeInt() const {     // lazy logic     if (m_bFirstTime)     {         m_bFirstTime = false;         Do something once     }      return some int...  } 

EDIT: Does the ‘mutable’ keyword play a role here?

Answer 1

Make m_bFirstTime mutable:

class MyClass {   : :   mutable bool m_bFirstTime; }; 

…but this is also very often an indication of a design flaw. So beware.