On Saturday, August 04, 2012 09:06:19 Era Scarecrow wrote: > As mentioned before, doesn't 'const' _only_ apply to the current > (this) object and not anything else? Besides the contracts can't > have lasting side effects that would change logical execution. > How would changing the current object in an invariant be correct > in release code?
The problem is that if the this pointer/reference is const, then you can't call any member functions which aren't const, and you can't call any non-const functions on any member variables, because _they're_ const, because the this pointer/reference is const. And there are plenty of types out there which _can't_ have many of their member functions be const and do what they need to do, because D's const is both physical and transitive (unlike C++'s const). So, it's quite easy to get into a situation, where you can't call much of any functions at all if the this pointer/reference is const even though calling the non-const functions wouldn't actually mutate anything. - Jonathan M Davis
