In the last chapter, we discussed object composition, where complex classes are constructed from simpler classes and types. Object composition is perfect for building new objects that have a “has-a” relationship with their parts. However, object composition is just one of the two major ways that C++ lets you construct …
In this section, we’ll address some of the common issues that new programmers seem to run across with fairly high probability. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of compilation or execution problems, but rather a pragmatic list of solutions to very basic issues. If you have any …
In real life, we use containers all the time. Your breakfast cereal comes in a box, the pages in your book come inside a cover and binding, and you might store any number of items in containers in your garage. Without containers, it would be extremely inconvenient to work with …
In the previous lesson , we noted that object composition is the process of creating complex objects from simpler ones. We also talked about one type of object composition, called composition. In a composition relationship, the whole object is responsible for the existence of the part. In this lesson, we’ll …
In real-life, complex objects are often built from smaller, simpler objects. For example, a car is built using a metal frame, an engine, some tires, a transmission, a steering wheel, and a large number of other parts. A personal computer is built from a CPU, a motherboard, some memory, etc… …
In the previous lessons ( and ), you learned how to use the debugger to watch the path of execution through your program. However, stepping through a program is only half of what makes the debugger useful. The debugger also lets you examine the value of variables as you step …
When you run your program, execution begins at the top of the main function, and then proceeds sequentially statement by statement, until the program ends. At any point in time while your program is running, the program is keeping track of a lot of things: the value of the variables …
This lesson continues our introduction of constructors from lesson . Member initialization via a member initialization list To have a constructor initialize members, we do so using a (often called a “member initialization list”). Do not confuse this with the similarly named “initializer list” that is used to initialize aggregates …
Shallow copying Because C++ does not know much about your class, the default copy constructor and default assignment operators it provides use a copying method known as a memberwise copy (also known as a shallow copy). This means that C++ copies each member of the class individually (using the assignment …
Consider the following program: #include <iostream> class Fraction { private: int m_numerator{ 0 }; int m_denominator{ 1 }; public: // Default constructor Fraction(int numerator=0, int denominator=1) : m_numerator{numerator}, m_denominator{denominator} { } void print() const { std::cout << “Fraction(” << m_numerator << “, ” << m_denominator << “)\n”; } }; int …
