Constant References

Lecture 2 - Slide 16 : 29

Constant References

A constant reference is really a reference to a constant

The use of const in a declaration of a reference (argument) means that we do not want to change the referenced object

"An initializer for const T& does not need to be an lvalue, or even of type T"

  const T &var = expression;

Initialization of var - a reference to T
- Implicit conversion from the type of expression to T is performed
- The result is placed in a temporary variable of type T
- var is bound to the tempory variable - which cannot be mutated

The initialization of const reference var from rvalue, with type conversion.

A similar program that initializes a user defined struct via a 'functional casting' constructor.

Use of a const reference in the vector_min_max function (alread encountered in this lecture).

Illustrates that it is not good to return a const reference to a deallocated local variable.