Thread: Best Programming Pratices with Constructors

Hello !
I'm learning C++ by myself and I found very different ways to use constructors.
Which is the best practice?

Example 1 .h :

Code:

  Product(int barCode, string const &title,
            string const &author,string const &publisher, 
            int price );

or

Code:

 Product(int , string , string , string , int );

.cpp

Code:

Product::Product(int barCode, string const &title,
            string const &author, string const &publisher,
            int price)
: barCode_(barCode), title_(title), author_(author), 
  publisher_(publisher), price_(price){}

or

Code:

Product::Product(int barCode, string const &title,
            string const &author, string const &publisher,
            int price)
{
barCode_ = barCode;
title_ = title;
author_ = author; 
publisher_ = publisher;
price_ = price;
}

Originally Posted by laserlight

There is the risk that the parameter names in a forward declaration might go out of sync with those in the definition, but, generally, specifying the parameter names is better than not doing so.

Where you have the choice, initialising member variables using the constructor's initialiser list is better than assigning to member variables in the constructor body.

Thank you. I'll try keep everything in parameter list.

Originally Posted by grumpy

A couple of observations based on your usage of a "string" type.

Are you employing "using namespace std" at file scope in your header file? Then don't - that is worse practice than any of the alternatives with implementing constructors.

Are you employing "using std::string" at file scope in your header file? That is less of a crime than "using namespace std" in your header file, but still not a particularly good idea.

There are numerous posts around here, and elsewhere, explaining why.

I use "using namespace std;"
And usually I use string as string const & . Is this wrong?
I'll search on forum. I know this is a long a discussion, but I don't know who is right