ngo@tammy.harvard.edu (Tom Ngo) (02/20/91)
On December 14, 1990 I posted a message in preparation for submission
to the ANSI committee, proposing the addition of a type-specifier
"~const". The primary purpose of ~const would be to permit caching
member variables. For your convenience, the original posting is
included as the last part of this message.
In the next few messages I summarize the reactions. This message
should be treated as a sort of index to the next few. I hope people
prefer many short messages, with visible headers, to one long one! I
feel OK about doing this in a relatively low-traffic newsgroup.
I would appreciate any further comments from those interested. If I
get no comments back, I will write up the final proposal (expounding
on issues that X3J16 would like to see addressed in proposals), post
it to this group, and also mail it to the committee.
* General reactions: positive.
* Alternative ways to accomplish what ~const does: dual classes,
cast-from-const.
* Fate of cast-from-const: keep it but deprecate it.
* Generalizations of ~const-like syntax: ~volatile, ~register,
~virtual, ~inline.
* Name: maybe make it !const.
* Compiler complexity: not addressed in responses.
* Experience: not addressed in responses.
Many thanks for the reactions, and apologies for not following up
earlier. These past few weeks have been very busy!
--
Tom Ngo
ngo@harvard.harvard.edu
617/495-1768 lab number, leave message