Thread: Inheritance problems

I'm having trouble with a homework assignment. This inheritance business is driving me crazy. In short, I'm trying to access data and functions from a parent class, through a subclass. The data I'm trying to arrange is best kept together, but I keep getting confused as to how to accomplish this. I made a couple of notes in red below to try clarify my problem a bit.

Thanks,
wheels

Extract from my code:

Code:

class People
{
 public:
  void display(void);
  void read_data(void);

 protected:
  StrType name;
  float pay_rate;
  float gross_pay;
  float inc_tax;
  float ss_tax;
  float net_pay;
  int hours;
};


class Police : public People
{
  People cops; This is where I try to link the struct to class "People" 
  Police *left;
  Police *right;
};


Police* infile(Police*);
Police* add(Police*, Police*);
void display(Police*);
void print_menu(void);

void main()
{


//infile will read in data from a file specified by the user after checking
//to ensure the file is valid.  infile will also perform the computations
//necessary to populate the node then call the "add" function to insert the
//newly populated node to the appropriate place in the tree.
Police* infile(Police* root)
{
 StrType filename;
 Police* buffer;

 cout << "Enter a filename: ";
 cin >> filename;
 cin.ignore(80,'\n');
 cout << endl << endl;
 fin.open(filename.c_str());

 //If file doesn't open, let user know
 if(fin.fail())
  {
   cout << "Couldn't open file " << filename << endl;
   cout << "Press any key to continue.";
   cin.ignore(80,'\n');
  } //end if
 else
  //Create new node to attach to tree
  {
   buffer = new Police;
   while(fin)
   {
    void Police.read_data();  I get an error here saying "Improper use of typedef Police"   
    buffer->left = NULL;  I get an error here and other places saying "'Police::left' is unaccessible (or something similar"  
    buffer->right = NULL;
    //Call "add" function to attach node to correct spot in the tree
    root = add(root,buffer);
    //Create new node and read in the next set of data
    buffer = new Police;
   }//end while
   //Delete instance of buffer before "infile" returns
   delete buffer;
  } //end else
 return root;
} //end infile

//"add" is a recursive function that will search through the tree for the
//appropiate placement of new nodes being added to the tree.
Police* add(Police* root, Police* buffer)
{
 if(root)
 {
  if(buffer->name <= root->name)
   root->left = add(root->left,buffer);
  else
   root->right = add(root->right,buffer);
 }
 else
  root = buffer;
 return root;
}

Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try.

--Wheels165