I am trying to understand the useage of 'const' and '&' in the following function declaration. I know that the last 'const' means the function cannot change member variables in the class and that 'const std::string& message' means the variable passed to the function cannot be changed, but I don't understand the meaning of 'const Logger&'. What is the purpose of this first 'const' and why is there an '&' following 'Logger'? Is this function meant to return an address or a pointer?
const Logger& log(const std::string& message) const;
So const Logger& is the return type of log. const means you will not be able to edit the return value at all. The return type Logger& means you'll get a reference to a Logger and not a copy of it.