Thread: Making a human class...not sure what to do

I wanna make a class called Human. Then I would like to have a little menu in main that says:

1. Gender
2. Age
3. Hieght

And things like that. What I need help with is the making of the class, I can make a menu to access whats in the class easily. The only class I have made is the one in the tutorial on this site. Ive only modified it a little. Can someone explain to me what it would look like?

Code:

class Human{
     public:
          Human();
          ~Human();

           // Im guessing you would put something like void gender(); here
           // Along with int feMale(); meaing female or male...I dont know. Something like
           // that is my guess.
     protected:
          // What would go here?
     private:
          // Would there be anything here?
};

// Lol, no clue what would go here either...im such a noob.

Thats just what I know about classes...well their basic structure anyways. As you can tell, I have no clue where things would go.

Code:

class Human {
  public:
    // Constructors, destructors, methods and public variables
    // Those can be accessed by anyone
  protected:
    // protected is only needed if you inherit from class Human, it says
    // that you can only access these members/functions if you are a child
    // of this class. You most probably won't need this section.
  private:
    // nobody can access this except class Human
    // might want to have your gender defined as follow
    enum Gender { MALE, FEMALE } gender;
};

Thanks for posting, but you didnt really help me heh. I know the basics of WHAT is supposed to go there. I guess I should have asked my question differently. Hmm...

Can anyone type some sample code that shows what might go in pblic,protected and private. If someone could do that I could probably work off the example and figure out the rest on my own.

Also, Desolation...whats enum?



EDIT: Lol, Tonto posted right before I made this. Thanks for posting that and you can ignore this post now. Heh

Well I have got it where it shows the age and height. But I cant figure out how to set gender to either male or female and have it appear where I want it.

Code:

void Human::setGender(char g) 
{
    gender = g; // where gender is a private member
}

char Human::getGender() 
{
    return gender; // where gender is, again, a private member
}

Simple, and cut down, main -

Code:

int main()
{
	Human person;

	// Get the person's info with cin and whatnot

	person.setGender( Gender ); // You have cin'd a character variable called Gender

	std::cout<< person.getGender(); // Returns the gender
}

Why have a gender as functions setGender() and getGender()? Can't you just have a public gender variable? Also gender is a good thing to be hold in a BOOL data type.

Originally Posted by maxorator

Why have a gender as functions setGender() and getGender()? Can't you just have a public gender variable?

Sure you can. But the moment you want to store the gender in some different way, or log a message whenever the gender is changed (because laws against cross-gender operations have been passed, for example) or want to enforce some restrictions, you're pretty much screwed with a variable. Getters/setters are future-oriented programming, and thanks to inlining, they're usually free in terms of runtime performance.

Also gender is a good thing to be hold in a BOOL data type.

No, it's not. First, nothing is a good thing to hold in a BOOL data type, because that's a Win32 "C has no bool" type. If anything, use a proper C++ bool.
It's also conceptually wrong. is_male could be boolean, or is_female. gender cannot be boolean - what does true mean? Make's me think of Austin Powers.

Form: Sex?
Austin: Yes, please!

An enum is by far the best choice for gender. It's an enumeration of a finite and small set of possible values, namely "male" and "female".

Yes, there's no compromise possible when holding it in the bool data type so you must decide which of them (true and false) is male and which is female.

This is a C++ forum and C++ has bool so there's nothing wrong with it.

Originally Posted by CornedBee

It's also conceptually wrong. is_male could be boolean, or is_female. gender cannot be boolean - what does true mean? Make's me think of Austin Powers.


An enum is by far the best choice for gender. It's an enumeration of a finite and small set of possible values, namely "male" and "female".

A bool would be plain stupid in that case. enum is the best way to go.

What is wrong with bool? You don't like that it uses only 1 single bit?

He could use an INT? Use 0 and 1.

The same thing with bool. True and false ARE 0 and 1, aren't they?

Because what looks right... human->gender(true); or human->gender(female); ?

Code:

#define MALE false
#define FEMALE true