Thread: Need Big Solution For Small Problem

I am trying to create objects of classes inside functions, and then using those objects in main(). Here is my code, followed by the problem.

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>

void createDates();  // notice this

/////////skip this//////////////////////////

class Date
{
 private:
    int month, day, year;
 public:
    Date(int m = 0, int d = 0, int y = 0)
      {month = m; day = d; year = y;}
    void setDate(int m, int d, int y){month = m; day = d; year = y;}
};


class Employee
{
 private:
        int id, salary;
        Date hired;
 public:
  Employee(int, int, Date);
};

Employee::Employee(int i, int s, Date h)
{
 id = i; salary = s;
 hired = h;
}

//////////////stop skipping////////////////////////////

int main()
{
 createDates();   // this executes before anything else in main.
 Date today(7, 31, 2002);  // object to be used in future lines

 Employee jake(1, 32900, today); // uses the Date object created above 
 Employee brian(2, 34000, tomorrow); // uses the object created in function
 
 system("pause");
 return 0;
}

void createDates()
{
 Date tomorrow(8, 1, 2002);
}

main() begins by calling createDates(), which creates one Date object called tomorrow.
Then, a date object is created called today directly in main().
The code then goes on to create Employee objects, using Date objects as their last argument/parameter thingy. jake will work fine, but brian will not, because its class object parameter/argument thingy was declared outside main().

I need to have tomorrow declared in a separate function. Need to!! how can I have Employee objects recognize Date objects declared in such functions?

ooooh.

is there anyway to err... have it visible to the whole file?

woot found a way. i just declared tomorrow globally...

Code:

class Date
{
    // ...
}tomorrow;

then initialized it using

Code:

void createDates()
{
 tomorrow.setDate(arguments);
}

You would have to have your function return a pointer to a dynamically allocated object:

Code:

int main()
{
    Date* tomorrow = createDates();
    ...
    ...
    ...
    return 0;
}

Date* createDates()
{
    // Return a dynamically allocated date object.  Create
    // a constructor that can handle arguments to initialize it.
    return new Date(8, 1, 2002);
}

Easy huh!

global variables are not a good idea in general, especially if your trying to be object-oriented. You will need to declare tomorrow as a const or pass it back and forth between functions.

i don't know another way. the create dates caller is in a different source code then the function being called (i did that for organization).
This isn't the real program i'm making, though. Endo knows the story.

What hk_mp5kpdw does is a good way to counter the problem. Another way is to declare it in main and pass the date to every function that needs to use it.

Code:

void function1( Date& date )
{
   //stuff which might modify date
}


void function2( Date& date )
{
   //more code stuff
}

void main( )
{
   Date today( 1, 2, 3 );
   function1( today );
   function2( today );
}

I hope you can see the risk of using global variables, if you have 100 functions modifying it at different times and in different places its very hard to keep track of its value. If you've ever looked at Java programming there are no globals, everything is contained in classes.