I have a member variable of type vector (where is T is a custom class, but it could be int as well.) I have a function from which I want to return a pointer to this vector, but I don't want the caller to be able to change the vector or it's items. So I want the return type to be const vector* None of the casting methods I tried worked. The compiler keeps complaining that T is not compatible with const T. Here's some code that demonstrates the gist of what I'm trying to do; vector<int> a; const vector<const int>* b = (const vector<const int>* ) (&a); This code doesn't compile for me. Thanks in advance!