Instantiating objects when you don't know the constructor arguments?

Hello all,

I'm trying to complete a homework exercise for college, but I'm stuck on one point. The assignment is to write a program that marshals and unmarshals several Student objects. The marshaling is done by the StudentMarshalling class.

The problem I'm having is this: The Student object *requires* the name and score array of the student to be passed in when the student is created. So we can't use a for loop to assign values to the Student data. Nor can we do this:

Student* foo = new Student[10];

As such I'm trying to figure out how my StudentMarshall.unmarshal method can return to my main.cpp file an array of Student objects.

Can anyone assist me on this (and my apologies for any lack of clarity in my explanation!)

rewrite the student class to include a more generic constructor

Quote:

---

Originally posted by moi
rewrite the student class to include a more generic constructor

---

I would love to, but the assignment dictates we cannot rewrite any part of the class. :(

Can I see that student class? You could use vectors.

Quote:

---

As such I'm trying to figure out how my StudentMarshall.unmarshal method can return to my main.cpp file an array of Student objects.

---

Can it return an array of pointers?

Rather than create a pointer to an array of objects whose constructor arguements I didn't know, I just created an array of pointers.

Thanks to everyone who offered me help! :)