title: Is const_cast<const Type*> ever useful?
body: <p>Recently I found a piece of C++ code that effectively does the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>char* pointer = ...;
  const char* constPointer = const_cast&lt;const char*&gt;( pointer );
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Obviously the author thought that <code>const_cast</code> means "add const", but in fact <code>const</code> can be just as well added implicitly:</p>
  
  <pre><code>const char* constPointer = pointer;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there any case when I would really have to <code>const_cast</code> <em>to</em> a pointer-to-const (<code>const_cast&lt;const Type*&gt;</code> as in above example)?</p>