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wtd

Sun Jul 02, 2006 3:33 pm


Value of const/final members in classes?

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So... what's your opinion?  Do constant or final (in the case of Java and some others) members (or "instance variables") have merit? 

Or should this be purely enforced by the methods a classes exposes?


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[Gandalf]

Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:03 pm



-----------------------------------

They're useful for internal use inside a class, no?  For constants which you must access externally, I'd use methods.


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wtd

Mon Jul 03, 2006 4:16 pm



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I was actually thinking of just the opposite.

Consider:

class Foo
{
   private:
      int _bar;
 
   public:
      Foo(int b) : _bar(b) { }

      int bar() const
      {
         return _bar;
      }
};

vs.

struct Foo
{
   const int bar;

   Foo(int b) : bar(b) { }
};