Creating read-only (public) class members in C++

Question

I'm coming from a background in languages like Actionscript 3 where we have a special way of defining a member variable as both an instance and a method for setting/fetching the value of a protected or private member. Let me give an example:

Within a class, we can say something like this:

private var _myString:String;

public get myString():String 
{
    return _myString;
}

public set myString(newValue:String):void
{
    //Do some super secret member protection n' stuff
    _myString = newValue;
}

And then outside of that object I can do the following:

trace(myClass.myString); //Output whatever _myString is. (note the lack of (). It's being accessed like property not a method...

And even further, I could do something like delete the "public set myString" method, so if someone tried to do this with my class:

myClass.myString = "Something"; //Try to assign - again note the lack of ()

It would throw an error, letting the user know that the property is available as read-only.

Now since I'm using C++ and it's infinitely more awesome than Actionscript 3, I'm wondering how I can mimic this type of behavior. I don't want to use a bunch of dirty getVariable() and setVariable() methods. I was hoping through some operator overloading trickery I could make the exact same thing possible here. Note I am a noob, so please address me as such. :)

Update I guess the easiest way to explain this is, I'm trying to essentially have getters and setters but invoke them through assignment rather than with the parentheses ().

Answer 1

Sorry, with C++, the syntactic sugar is not there, which means you have to implement the get/set methods yourself. So in your case you will have to implement a getVariable() method without it's equivalent Set method in order to make it read only.

And please don't resort to macro's to make it Look like you have some read only properties. That will just piss people off when they read your code 5 years from now.