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writing a class without the class declaration?

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Join Date: Oct 2004

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Reputation: confusedmind is an unknown quantity at this point

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confusedmind confusedmind is offline

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writing a class without the class {} tag

Oct 23rd, 2004

hi i am having trouble understanding that what is the difference between having class xxx { } in the .h file and not having it?

say i have these two code, can anyone tell me the difference?

 Help with Code Tags 
 C++ Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
#ifndef sample_h
#define sample_h
 
class sample {
 
function1 ();
function2 ();
 
};
 
#endif
#ifndef sample_h
#define sample_h

class sample {

function1 ();
function2 ();

};

#endif

and

 Help with Code Tags 
 C++ Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
 
#ifndef sample_h
#define sample_h
 
function1 ();
function2 ();
 
#endif
#ifndef sample_h
#define sample_h

function1 ();
function2 ();

#endif

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Join Date: Jun 2004

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Reputation: Chainsaw is an unknown quantity at this point

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Chainsaw

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Re: writing a class without the class declaration?

Oct 24th, 2004

Er, well, one has a class definition with two member functions, and one has two functions.

All things being equal, the difference is that you can directly call the two functions in the second case, but need to create an instance of class 'sample' to call the functions in the first case.

The sample class you've defined here doesn't do much 'extra' that classes can be fantastic for. Like, instance variables or constructors/destructors or superclasses.

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Join Date: Oct 2004

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Reputation: Ejaz is an unknown quantity at this point

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Ejaz

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Re: writing a class without the class declaration?

Oct 24th, 2004

The two different implementations can acheive the same results, but they belong to two different familes. One is strucutural and you'll find the C implementations like that (although it does work in C++ as well).

Where as classes are part of C++, which applies Object Oriented approach to solve the problems. In C++, the concept is like, you implement the algorithms in terms of class member functions and these can be accessed through the object (instance) of the class. (for static methods, you don't need the object of the class). This approach gives you good abstraction, encapsulations of data and many other benefits.

There is another pradigm, referred as Generic Programming, where the implementations are done through templates (like STL).

Regards,

Ejaz.