Should member functions be “const” if they affect logical state, but not bitwise state?

Question

I\'m writing a class that wraps a legacy C API that controls a hardware device. In a simplified example, I might have something like:

class device
{
public:         


        

Answer 1

If it changes the state, it generally should not be const. The fact that the state in question is owned remotely (i.e., in a controlled device) doesn't change that.