Synopsis

(Required) Member functions shall not return non-const handles to class-data.

Enabled by default

Yes

Severity/Certainty

Medium/High

Full description

Member functions return non-const handles to members. This check is identical to CPU-return-ref-to-class-data.

Coding standards

Code examples

The following code example fails the check and will give a warning:

class C{
  int x;
 public:
  int& foo();
  int* bar();
};

int& C::foo() {
  return x;  //returns a non-const reference to x
}

int* C::bar() {
  return &x;  //returns a non-const pointer to x
}

The following code example passes the check and will not give a warning about this issue:

class C{
  int x;
 public:
  const int& foo();
  const int* bar();
};

const int& C::foo() {
  return x;  //OK - returns a const reference
}

const int* C::bar() {
  return &x;  //OK - returns a const pointer
}