Problem with pointers to dynamic objects

Originally Posted by CornedBee

Public and private inheritance share pretty much nothing, conceptually. Public inheritance is a subtype relationship requiring substitutability. To put it in terms of Coplien, it's a form of positive variance. Public bases are part of the interface of a class.
Private inheritance is strictly an implementation detail. It is absolutely no business of any other code that a class privately inherits something. Private inheritance is merely a convenience over containment and implementation in terms of a single subobject.

Sorry if this sounds kind of dumb, but are you saying that if I use private inheritance then the child class will not inherit any of its parents variables?

Also , I'm still having problems with these pointers . Once again the notes I got don't cover dynamic objects created within objects. I guess maybe I need a book :P

I'm trying to get the pointer to the guest staying in a room. Heres my get member function:

Code:

guests rooms::GetGuest(){return *p;}

And heres where I call it:

Code:

void CheckAvail(rooms *room)
{  
    for(int i=1; i<=num_rooms; i++)
    {
        cout << "Room: " << room[i].GetNumber() << " \tat $" << room[i].GetCost() << "\t";         
        if(room[i].GetGuest() != NULL)
            cout << "Booked\n";
        else
            cout << "Vacant\n";
    }
}

When I run the prog I get this error at the IF statement:

Code:

no match for 'operator!=' in 'rooms::GetGuest()() != 0'

Could someone please point out whats wrong here. Thx.

Originally Posted by mike_g

Sorry if this sounds kind of dumb, but are you saying that if I use private inheritance then the child class will not inherit any of its parents variables?

No, it will inherit the parent's members. But they won't be visible to the outside. For all practical purposes, there are only three differences between B and C:

Code:

class A {};
class B : private A {};
class C {
  A a;
};

Difference 1 is the syntax to access the A members. Class B can use them without qualification, class C has to access them through a. Also, for exposing selected members of A, class C has to write a forwarding function, while class B merely needs a using declaration.
Difference 2 is that class B has access to A's protected members, while class C does not.
Difference 3 is that the empty base class optimization can be applied in the case of class B, but not in the case of class C. (There may be an empty subobject optimization, but I'm not sure about that. I don't really think so.)

I guess maybe I need a book :P

Sounds like an excellent idea. This assignment gives me huge doubts about the quality of the class you're taking.

GetGuest dereferences the pointer, yet the calling code acts like it returned the pointer directly.

Cool, I chucked an ampersand in the start of the if statement and that seems to have fixed it. Thanks man

Hmm... I spoke too soon :/ The program now compiles but when it gets to the IF statement it crashes.

Heres the function again:

Code:

guests rooms::GetGuest(){return *p;}

And heres my new dodgy IF statement:

Code:

if(&room[i].GetGuest() != NULL)

Compiler message: taking address of temporary

This effect is called slicing. Don't do it.

Rather, just return a pointer from GetGuest().