Question

I’m wondering if a class’s member function should be const if it calls other functions that modify its data members. A good example would be a public member function that uses private member functions to do the brunt of the work.

void Foo::Show() const { // Doesn't directly modify data members in this function
    ShowPig(); // One or all of these functions modify data members
    ShowCow();
    ShowBar();
}

Maybe not the best example, but you get the idea.

Answer 1

If a function calls functions that modify certain data, then it should be said that the function itself modifies data. It just happens to be abstracted.

So no, that function should not be const.