CSE 428S: Studio 6

Classes


In today's studio you will begin a series of topics focused on object-oriented programming, with a basic review of C++ structs and classes, access specifications, and constructors.

Please complete the following required exercises. I encourage you to please work in groups of 2 or 3 people on each studio (and the groups are allowed to change from studio to studio) though if you would prefer to complete any studio by yourself that is also allowed.

As you work through these exercises, please record your answers, and when you finish them please log into Canvas, select this course in this semester, and then upload a .txt file containing your answers on the Canvas page for this studio assignment. Only one submission per team, please, and if you need to re-submit it the person who originally submitted the studio should please be the one to do that.

Make sure that the name of each person who worked on these exercises is listed in the first answer, and make sure you number each of your responses so it is easy to match your responses with each exercise.


Required Exercises

  1. As the answer to the first exercise, list the names of the people who worked together on this studio.
  2. First, ssh into shell.cec.wustl.edu using your WUSTL Key id and password and then use qlogin to log into one of the Linux Lab machines and then confirm that the version of g++ there is correct (as you did in Studio 0). Then cd into your directory for this course this semester, create a new subdirectory for this studio, and cd into it.

    Create a new header file and source file in your directory for this studio, and in the header file declare a struct with two integer member variables. Do not add private, protected, or public access specifications, or any constructors, methods, or operators, or initialize the member variables – we will first look at basic semantics of a struct or class and will then explore additional features.

    Add a new source file to your directory for this studio, and in it (1) include the newly created header file and (2) define your program's main function and in it declare a variable of the struct type and then print out its member variables using cout.

    Copy over the Makefile from one of your previous studios into your directory and update it appropriately, then try to build and run your program and note any compiler warnings or compiler errors that were given.

    Then (in the header and source files for the struct, respectively) declare and define a default constructor that initializes the member variables to 0 using the base class / member initialization list (not the constructor body).

    Again try to build and run your program, and as the answer to this exercise, please describe say what happened before and after you added the constructor (including any compiler warnings or errors you saw in either case, and if you are able to get either variation to build and run, what values were printed out and where you think they came from.

  3. Change the declaration in the header file from a struct to a class, still without adding any private, public, or protected declarations, and try to build and run your program. Then try putting a public vs. protected vs. private declaration before the member variables within the class declaration, and try to build and run your program. As the answer to this exercise, please explain the difference between a struct vs. a class and describe how that difference explains which access specifications (public vs. protected vs. private) need to be used to make member variables (and member functions) visible outside a class.

  4. Change the class declaration to have private member variables, and for each of the member variables add a public "accessor" member function (which takes no parameters and returns an int) and a public "mutator" member function (which takes an int type return that assigns the member variable the passed value and then returns a reference to the current object that contains the member variables (e.g., return *this;. Declare the accessor methods to be const (by putting the keyword const after the closing parenthesis).

    In your program's main function, try calling the accessor and mutator methods on const and non-const objects of the class type and remove statements that do not work, leaving the ones that do (the accessors should work on both, but the mutators should only work on non-const objects). Use those methods to print out the member variables’ original values, and for non-const objects to set those values to something different (and then print out the new values of the member variables). As the answer to this exercise, please show (1) your code for this and (2) what the program printed out.

  5. In your main function, try out the following operations (using the class name and accessors and mutators from your declaration, rather than as given below), printing out the values of the variables after each line.

    MyClass m; // default construction

    cout << “m.x is ” << m.x() << “ and m.y is ” << m.y() << endl;

    m.x(7).y(3); // chained use of mutator functions

    cout << “m.x is ” << m.x() << “ and m.y is ” << m.y() << endl;

    MyClass n(m); // copy construction

    cout << “n.x = ” << n.x() << “ and n.y = ” << n.y() << endl;

    Build and run your program and as the answer to this exercise, please explain what each of the compiler-supplied (i.e., it provides them if you don’t) default constructor and copy constructor is doing, based on the output you saw.

  6. Declare and define (in your header and source files respectively) a copy constructor for the class that takes a const reference to another object of the same type and initializes its member variables (again in the base-member initialization list) to have the values of the member variables of the object from which the current object is being constructed; make sure to use the base-member initialization list for initializing member variables in the copy constructor (instead of assigning them in the body of the constructor).

    Compile and run your program, and as the answer to this exercise, please explain what happens compared to the compiler-supplied version of the copy constructor that you saw in the previous exercise, when you run the same code statements as above.

  7. Add statements to your default constructor and copy constructor that print out (1) the signature of each of them, (2) the memory address of the object (this), and (3) the values of the object's member variables, to cout.

    Add a function that takes an object of your class by value and returns that object by value (i.e., the function's return type is the class type), and then in your main function call that function (1) with the original object immediately after you default construct it but before its mutator member functions are called, (2) with the original object immediately after its mutator member functions are called, and then (3) with the copy constructed object immediately after it is created.

    Build and run your program, and as the answer to this exercise, please say which of the constructor methods are called, and in what order, when objects are created in main, are passed by value and are returned by value.

  8. As the answer to this exercise, please try out the following using the code you developed for the previous exercise, and answer each question. What happens if you declare your default constructor private but do not define it? Can you still create variables of that type? Does the compiler still supply a default constructor that can be used by statements in your main function?

    Things to Turn In:

    For this studio, please turn in the following:


    Page posted Thursday September 15, 2022, by Chris Gill.