const in C and C++

Globals are usually bad but not always. Consider C code that is to be migrated to C++ and has a bunch of global constants. As soon as that code is worked upon and is compiled as C++, those const globals will cause the compiler to start emitting "undefined reference" or similar errors.

This is because of fundamental different between how const is treated in C and C++ in the context of linkage.

In C, apart from the fact that const are non-modifiable variables, they are the same as any other variables. In C++, const have different linkage as well. C++ const objects/variables have internal linkage and hence you get unresolved symbol error when you try to access something in a different compilation unit having iternal linkage from another compilation unit.

The solution is to include the extern declaration following right after you define the const variables, the same one that you put in another files or simply define the variable as extern const instead of just const.