Preventing a const member function from changing a member array

Question

Apparently, a const member function is still allowed to change data that the class member are pointing to. Here\'s an example of what I mean:

class MyClass
{         


        

Answer 1

The reason you should use std::vector is actually because you want to store a collection of ints, and not an int pointer, so why not use it?

It would also solve your const'ness issue.

Here's how it works: declaring a method const will make all class members const. In your case, that means that in the method scope, your member data will become a constant pointer to an int. That means you can change the int (also meaning array members) as long as data points to the same location. Using std::vector, data would become a const std::vector, on which you could only call const functions. So yes, you should use std::vector.