Is a destructor considered a const function?

Question

Consider this

class Foo
{
public:
    Foo(){}
    ~Foo(){}
    void NonConstBar() {}
    void ConstBar() const {}
};

int main()
{
    const Foo* pFoo = new          


        

Answer 1

You can delete objects thorough constant pointers. In C++11, you can an also erase container elements through const-iterators. So yes, in a sense the destructor is always "constant".

Once the destructor is invoked, the object has ceased to exist. I suppose the question of whether a non-existing object is mutable or not is moot.

Answer 2

The lifetime of an object ends (for the owner/enclosing scope) as soon as the destructor is invoked, not when the destructor returns.

Therefore I don't see any problem deleting constants. It's already gone for you when you call delete.

Otherwise deleting constant objects would require a const_cast.