Re: [Plib-devel] PLIB developers needed.

[Curtis L. O. <cu...@me...>]

I didn't see that anyone replied to this so my apologies if I'm
duplicating what someone else wrote.

Steve Baker writes:
> The 'P' in PLIB stands for "Portability" - and the rest is just a "LIBrary"!
> 
> ...which reminds me...  :-)
> 
>  I tried to compile PLIB on an SGI machine at work - and your
> 'const-ification' of the clock routine stopped it from compiling on
> the IRIX compiler.
> 
> You had:
> 
>   class ulClock
>   {
>     ...
>     public:
>       ...
>       int getSomething () const { return something ; }
>       ...
>    } ;
> 
> The 'const' seemed to do *bad* things to the SGI compiler.
> 
> Could you remind me what exactly a 'const' right there actually *does*? 

As best as I can tell, this indicates to the compiler that a call to
foo->getSomething() does not modify foo in anyway.

So if you had a const instance of your class such as:

    const ulClock foo;

Then calling foo.getSomething() is legal.  

It's all part of maintaining const consistancy.

> ...and then remove them anyway!

Const is pretty handy if used correctly ... :-)

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   Human Factors Research Lab       Flight Gear Project
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