Create objects in conditional c++ statements
I don't know if I understood your question correctly but can't you just declare report before the if/else block and then initialize inside it?
Report header;
if (...) {
header = Report();
else
header = Report(name,company);
Or in a shorter way:
Report header; // calls default constructor
if (shouldInitializeWithParams) {
header = Report(name,company);
}
Of course this requires you to have the empty constructor defined.
First off, you cannot create an object within a conditional statement and use it after the conditional statement: the two branches of the conditional statement create a scope each and any object created within in destroyed a the end of the branch. That is, you need to come up with a different approach. The simplest approach is probably to delegate the creation of the object to a function which returns the objects as appropriate:
Report makeReport() {
if (enter_company_name()) {
...
return Report(name, company);
}
return Report();
}
...
Report report = makeReport();
An alternative approach is to use the ternary operator to conditonally create the Report
one way or another:
bool get_company_name = enter_company_name();
std::string name(get_company_name? read_name(): "");
std::string company(get_company_name? read_company(): "");
Report report = get_company_name? Report(name, company): Report();
All of these approaches assume that the Report
class is actually copyable.
We don't know whether class Report
is copy-able, so better to use pointers.
Report * header;
if (...) {
header = new Report();
else
header = new Report(name,company);
// after all don't forget
delete header;
and of course you should use header
pointer like that
header->print_formatted();