In C++11, in-class member initializers are allowed, but basically act the same as initializing in a member initialization list. Therefore, the size of the array must be explicitly stated. Stroustrup has a short explanation on his website here. The error message means that you are providing too many items for an array of length 0, … Read more
It’s very unfortunate that you see dynamic allocation so often. That just shows how many bad C++ programmers there are. In a sense, you have two questions bundled up into one. The first is when should we use dynamic allocation (using new)? The second is when should we use pointers? The important take-home message is … Read more
You can’t. The size of an array allocated with new[] is not stored in any way in which it can be accessed. Note that the return type of new [] is not an array – it is a pointer (pointing to the array’s first element). So if you need to know a dynamic array’s length, … Read more
I want a function that returns -1 for negative numbers and +1 for positive numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_function It’s easy enough to write my own, but it seems like something that ought to be in a standard library somewhere. Edit: Specifically, I was looking for a function working on floats.
The cstring header provides functions for dealing with C-style strings — null-terminated arrays of characters. This includes functions like strlen and strcpy. It’s the C++ version of the classic string.h header from C. The string header provides the std::string class and related functions and operators. The headers have similar names, but they’re not really related … Read more
I’d like to be able to introspect a C++ class for its name, contents (i.e. members and their types) etc. I’m talking native C++ here, not managed C++, which has reflection. I realise C++ supplies some limited information using RTTI. Which additional libraries (or other techniques) could supply this information?
I would like to use an enum value for a switch statement. Is it possible to use the enum values enclosed in “{}” as choices for the switch()“? I know that switch() needs an integer value in order to direct the flow of programming to the appropriate case number. If this is the case, do … Read more
You can’t return an istream by value because it’s not copyable. Since it’s not copyable the copy constructor has been deleted (to enforce the non-copyability), and that’s the direct technical cause of the diagnostic. So, instead of … do In other news, … Instead of just turn off precompiled headers in the Visual Studio project … Read more
delete[] monsters; Is incorrect because monsters isn’t a pointer to a dynamically allocated array, it is an array of pointers. As a class member it will be destroyed automatically when the class instance is destroyed. Your other implementation is the correct one as the pointers in the array do point to dynamically allocated Monster objects. … Read more
Strongly typed enums aiming to solve multiple problems and not only scoping problem as you mentioned in your question: Provide type safety, thus eliminating implicit conversion to integer by integral promotion. Specify underlying types. Provide strong scoping. Thus, it is impossible to implicitly convert a strongly typed enum to integers, or even its underlying type … Read more