Question

I’ve a class String, which presents a dynamical array of characters, which cannot be changed after initialization. So I need to initialize it, and then prevent further changes to the argument.

How can I do this? 🙂

Answer 1

You make your member const. And you do the initialization in the constructor.

class String
{
   const char* const _buff;  //both the contents and the pointer are const
public:
   String (const char* buff);
};

String::String(const char* buff) : _buff(buff)
{
}

EDIT: As @ildjarn pointed out, take extra care when using immutable objects. You have to be certain that’s what you actually need. You won’t be able to use them in standard containers, or have logical copying.