Managing a reference object

Following on a recent thread about exposing the aggregatee interface, I'm faced with a situation I'm not comfortable with and need your opinion.

To bring you back on focus... I have a class CInventory that is a part of CBeing. It was decided then that CInventory would expose its interface through IInventory.

Code:

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class IInventory { /*... */ }
class CInventory: public IInventory { /* ... */ }

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CBeing has a CInventory. It exposes CInventory interface through IInventory. This allowed me to hide a small subset of the CInventory interface I didn't want visible to users of CBeing while still have CInventory fully available to the internals of CBeing.

Code:

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class CBeing {
    public:
        /* ... */
        IInterface& Inventory() { return inv_; }
        const IInterface& Inventory() const { return inv_; }
  private:
        /* ... */
        CBeing& inv_;
};

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And this is where the problems start. You see, I don't want to worry much about the management of the inv_ object. So, it's quiet easy for me to change the above to pointers to CBeing, allocating on the constructor and deallocating on the destructor.

However the syntax I will be forcing on the user of CBeing is probably unnecessary. being.Inventory()->equip("sword"); is not pretty when I can have being.Inventory().equip("sword");.

The problem is that the above reference forces me to define CBeing::inv_ on the constructor initializer list. I just think my code smells trouble here...

Code:

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CBeing::CBeing(): inv_() {
    inv_.load_dat("00001");
}

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The problem is that I really don't have an object to feed inv_ with. That object will be created with CBeing and destroyed with it.

With pointers and allocation/deallocation I can solve this. But what can I do if I stick to references?

Doh!

I don't need inv_ to be a reference! Am I silly or what?... (Don't answer)

Took me a post to find that. When I couldn't after watering my eyes from so much looking at the code.

I'm having a deja vu here ...

It's actually very educational this type of problems. It keeps reminding me how little I know of C++. I think the hardest step is training my mind to it, not really learning the syntax.

When I look at a reference, for instance, and don't need to manually activate a few brain cells,... then I'll be a happy camper :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

Doh!

I don't need inv_ to be a reference!

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Yeah, inv_ can internally be a CInventory object, that is probably the best way (assuming you don't want the Inventory to be created before the Being and then passed in as a constructor parameter).

Of course you can return a reference even if you internally store the object as a pointer. return *inv_; would work.

Probably easiest of all to just have CInventory inv_; though.

You can return a reference regardless if you store the object as a reference, pointer, or object.