Smart Accessor Function for Multiple Data Containers?
Hi everyone,
I’m Pete, moderately-experienced C++ user who is always looking for better ways to do things.
Let me ask you guys about a problem I’ve scratching my head over lately. Suppose I’m writing a program designed to simulate a large company. I’m interested in tracking each company employee by the location where they work. This company has perhaps a thousand different locations:
Code:
class Employee {
public:
AccessorFunction1(); // does something
AccessorFunction2(); // does something different
AccessorFunction3(); // does something completely different
protected:
// Some data
};
class Company {
public:
void OrganizeLocation(int a);
protected:
vector<Employee*> LocationA;
vector<Employee*> LocationB;
vector<Employee*> LocationC;
...etc...
vector<Employee*> LocationZZZ;
};
Once employees are created and pointers to them are saved in the proper Location vector, I write an accessor function, OrganizeLocation(), designed to do a number of operations on a given vector. The problem is, I have maybe a thousand vectors. How do I call this function and specify which vector I want?
Currently, I’m using this clunky solution:
Code:
void Company::OrganizeLocation(int a){
switch(a) {
case 1: {
for(unsigned int i=0; i<LocationA.size(); i++) {
LocationA[i]->AccessorFunction1();
LocationA[i]->AccessorFunction2();
LocationA[i]->AccessorFunction3();
}
break;
}
case 2: {
for(unsigned int i=0; i<LocationB.size(); i++) {
LocationB[i]->AccessorFunction1();
LocationB[i]->AccessorFunction2();
LocationB[i]->AccessorFunction3();
}
break;
}
case 3: {
// etc...
}
case 4: {
// etc...
}
...etc...
case 1000: {
// etc...
}
}
}
The key point here is that whichever vector I choose to operate upon, I’ll do the exact same procedure every time. I hate this solution because it results in very long and repetitive code… not to mention its very error-prone when you re-editing all those “LocationA”s into “LocationB/C/D/etc.”
What would be an ideal solution would be if I could do some kind of string substitution into the vector name like (I think) you can do in PERL scripts:
Code:
void Company::OrganizeLocation( string $WhichOne$ ){
for(unsigned int i=0; i<LocationA.size(); i++) {
Location$WhichOne$[i]->AccessorFunction1();
Location$WhichOne$[i]->AccessorFunction2();
Location$WhichOne$[i]->AccessorFunction3();
}
Does anyone know of a way to do this? Or, if it can’t be done in C++, is there a better design approach? Ultimately I need the Company object to hold multiple vectors but use one compact accessor function to perform operations on just one of them.
Many thanks!
-Pete
