How to return a 'read-only' copy of a vector

Question

I have a class which has a private attribute vector rectVec;

class A { private:    vector<Rect> rectVec; }; 

My question is how can I return a 'read-only' copy of my Vector? I am thinking of doing this:

class A { public:   const vect<Rect>& getRectVec() { return rectVect; } } 

Is that the right way? I am thinking this can guard against the callee modify the vector(add/delete Rect in vector), what about the Rect inside the vector?

Answer 1

That is the right way, although you'll probably want to make the function const as well.

class A { public:   const vect<Rect>& getRectVec() const { return rectVect; }                            }; 

This makes it so that people can call getRectVec using a const A object.