Using Variables for Intelligent Access Functions?

Hello everyone,

I’m an intermediate-level C++ programmer grappling with a fairly rudimentary problem. I’m creating a C++ object called FruitCart; FruitCart contains a number of integers categorizing the numbers of individual fruit in the cart. I also need FruitCart to contain accessor functions so other functions can set, retrieve, and print the fruit values. Here’s what I have so far:

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Code:

class FruitCart {
  public:
    // Constructors
    FruitCart();
    ~FruitCart();

    // Accessors
    void SetApples(int a)  {Apples=a;}
    int GetApples()        {return Apples;}
    void PrintApples()     {cout<<Apples;}

    // Need accessor functions like the above for all kinds of fruit

  protected:
    int Apples;   // Number of Apples in the cart
    int Oranges;  // Number of Oranges in the cart
    int Bananas;  // Number of Bananas in the cart
    int Plums;    // Number of Plums in the cart

    // May have nearly 50 kinds of fruit!

};

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The problem I have is that I may have over fifty kinds of fruit in the cart! It would be a big pain to manually write out accessor functions for each kind of fruit.

I’m searching for a more intelligent solution. What I’d like to have is a general accessor function where I pass in the name of the fruit as a string (specifically, as a char * pointer) and leave everything else the same. Put in quasi-psuedocode:

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Code:

class FruitCart {
  public:
    // Constructors
    FruitCart();
    ~FruitCart();

    // Accessors
    void SetFruit(int a, char * FruitType)
    int GetFruit(char * FruitType)
    void PrintFruit(char * FruitType)

  protected:
    int Apples;   // Number of Apples in the cart
    int Oranges;  // Number of Oranges in the cart
    int Bananas;  // Number of Bananas in the cart
    int Plums;    // Number of Plums in the cart

};

void FruitCart::SetFruit(int a, char * FruitType)
  {  ${FruitType} = a;  }
int FruitCart::GetFruit(char * FruitType)
  {  return ${FruitType};  }
void FruitCart::PrintFruit(char * FruitType)
  {  cout << ${FruitType};  }

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Hopefully this makes sense. I know this would be simple to do in UNIX, so I’m hoping there’s a (relatively) simple way to do this in C++.

Many thanks!
-Pete

Sounds like the problem map<string, int> was born to solve.

This is great advice, thanks a million! I can't tell you how great it is to get expert help like this.

Many thanks!
-Pete