How to write a program

Well I have this 2nd year course for C++ where I have to write programs depending on the explanation and objectives of what the program should do. But i am having trouble to write them...

I was wondering if anyone would tell me how to start of a program that you will write and all you know is what the program must do.

say I need to write a program where there are 2 classes and a main funtion. One Employee class and one staff class..

Code:

class Employee
{
	private:
		char *		name;		// Employee's name
		double		hourlyRate;	// Hourly pay rate
		double		hours;		// Hours worked this week

		double		taxRate ();

	public:
		Employee ();
		~Employee ();

		void		setName (char * _name);
		void		setHourlyRate (double _hourlyRate);
		void		setHours (double _hours);
		void		printPayroll ();
};

Code:

class Staff
{
	private:
		int		totalEmployees;
		Employee	employees[MAX_EMPLOYEES];

	public:
		Staff ();
		~Staff ();

		void		addEmployee (char * _name,
					double _hourlyRate, double _hours);
		int		getTotalEmployees ();
		void		printPayroll ();
};

Now I need to write the definition of each member function
this is what I got for employee

Code:

# include <iostream>
# include "Employee.h"
using namespace std;

Employee::Employee() {
    name = new char [200];
    hourlyRate = 0;
    hours = 0;
}

Employee::~Employee() {
    delete[] name;
}

double Employee::taxRate () {
    int anual_Income = hourlyRate * 40 * 52;

    if (anual_Income < 20000) { return 15;}

    else if (anual_Income < 30000) return 0.20;

    else if (anual_Income < 40000) return 0.25;

    else if (anual_Income < 50000) return 0.30;

    else if (anual_Income < 60000) return 0.35;

    else if (anual_Income < 70000) return 0.40;

    else return 0.45;
}

char* Employee::setName (char *_name) {

   name = _name;
}

double Employee::setHourlyRate (double _hourlyRate) {

   hourlyRate = _hourlyRate;
}

double Employee::setHours (double _hours) {

   hours = _hours;
}

void Employee::printPayroll () {
    double overTime = 0, hours40 = hours;
        if (hours > 40) {
            overTime == hours - 40;
            hours40 = 40;}

    double weeklyPay = hours40 * hourlyRate + overtime * hourlyRate * 1.5;
    double tax = taxRate() * weeklyPay;

    cout << *name << ": " << weeklyPay << " - " <<   tax << " = " << weeklyPay - tax;

}

What am i doing wrong?

And how is what your program does different from what you (or someone else) expects?

Code:

if (anual_Income < 20000) { return 15;}

else if (anual_Income < 30000) return 0.20;

Aside from annual being misspelled, it seems very inconsistant to have 15 as the tax value for up to 20000, and then 0.20 up to 30000. Either it should be 0.15, or it should be 20, I expect - I didn't look at ALL your code to figure out which is the right variant.

--
Mats

Originally Posted by Tashfique

I was wondering if anyone would tell me how to start of a program that you will write and all you know is what the program must do.

That's generally how a lot of programming is. You are given a requirement to have a program accomplish objective X and then you work towards that goal. Without knowing what your overall goal is I can't say much... you do have some syntax/logical errors as described below.

Are you limited to using char pointers in this program? I'd seriously reconsider this if it is not the case, better to use a std::string container instead. Otherwise...

Code:

char* Employee::setName (char *_name) {

    name = _name;
}

I doubt this is what you want to do here. You've just caused a memory leak, you've lost the original pointer to the memory allocated in the constructor and reset the pointer to a new location. I'm guessing a call to the strcpy function is what you need here and _name should probably be declared const.

Also,

Code:

if (hours > 40) {
    overTime == hours - 40;
    hours40 = 40;}

The above looks wrong... specifically the use of the equality operator (==) instead of the assignment operator (=).

This is a nit, but functions that do not change any data within the class should be declared const. For example, since the printPayroll function does not modify any of the class data members (name,hourlyRate,hours) it should be declared as such:

Code:

class Employee
{
    ...
    void printPayroll () const;
};

Code:

cout << *name << ": " << weeklyPay << " - " <<   tax << " = " << weeklyPay - tax;

Your use of *name above is incorrect. This will just print the first letter of the person's name and not the whole thing.

It really helps if you sit down with some pen and paper and write everything down. Start planning.
To achieve X, I must do Y, etc. Then connect them. Figure out what classes can represent this and that, then start planning the layout of classes, etc.
Good planning from the start will save you headaches later!

> Are you limited to using char pointers in this program? I'd seriously reconsider this if it is not the case, better to use a std::string container instead.
Yes, he really should.
And that's not the only "mistake" with char arrays in the snippet posted.