Object Oriented

Programming
(SE1143)
Week 4

Department of Software Engineering

Capital University of Science and Technology (CUST)
Outline

 Parameter Constructor
 Copy Constructors
 Instance Members
 Class Members

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Constructors

 We discussed no parameter constructor (default) last week.

 Circle ();
 We can have two other types of constructors called
 Parameter Constructor
 Copy Constructor
 The following figure shows the declaration of a parameter
constructor and a copy constructor along with a default constructor

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Parameter Constructor

 A parameter constructor initializes the data members of each

instance with specified values.
 The parameter constructor can be overloaded, which means that we
can have several parameter constructors each with a different
signature (different parameters).
 The advantage of the parameter constructor is that we can initialize
the data members of each object with a specific value.
 For example, if we use a parameter constructor, the radius of one
circle can be initialized to 3.1, another one to 4.6, and so on.

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Copy Constructor

 Sometimes we want to initialize each data member of an object to

the same value as a corresponding data member of a previously
created object.
 We can use a copy constructor in this case.
 After calling the copy constructor, the source and the destination
objects have exactly the same value for each data member.
 The copy constructor has only one parameter that receives the
source object by reference.
 We cannot overload the copy constructor because the parameter list
is fixed and we cannot have an alternative form.

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Definition of a Parameter and Copy
Constructor

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Object Construction and Destruction

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A Complete Program

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Output

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Description

 The application creates three objects, circle1, circle2, and circle3,

using a parameter constructor, a copy constructor, and a default
constructor.
 Note that the application does not call the destructor but the system
calls it when the object goes out of scope.
 The interesting point is that the objects are destroyed in the reverse
order in which they are constructed.
 The last created object is destroyed first; the first created object is
destroyed last.
 This is because the objects are created in stack memory. In a stack,
the last item inserted is the first item that can be removed.

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Instance Members and
Class Members

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Instance Members and Class
Members
 When we design a class, we can have two groups of
members:
 instance members
 Instance Data Members
 Instance Member Functions
 class members (static members)
 Class Data Members
 Class Member Functions

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Instance Data
Members

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Instance Data Members

 An instance data member defines the attributes of an

instance (object)
 These data members belong exclusively to the
corresponding instance and cannot be accessed by other
instances.
 Separate regions of memory are assigned for each object
and each region stores possibly different values for each
data member.
 Encapsulation

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Access Modifier for Instance Data
Member
 It makes more sense for instance data members to be private.
 If we make the data members of an instance member public, they
can be directly accessed by the application without calling an
instance member function.
 In object-oriented programming we want the objects to apply their
behaviors on their attributes.
 We must make the instance data members private so that they can
be accessed only through instance member functions.

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Instance Member
Functions

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Instance Member Functions

 An instance member function defines one of the behaviors

that can be applied on the instance data members of an
object.
 There is only one copy of each instance member function in
memory and it must be shared by all instances.

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Access Modifier for Instance
Member Functions
 The access modifier for an instance member function is normally
public and allows access from outside the class (the application)
 If the member function is supposed to be used only by other instance
member functions within the class, we can make it private.

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Instance Member Function Selectors

 An application (for example, the main function) can call an instance

member function to operate on an instance.
 This call must be done through the instance.
 The application must first construct an instance and then let the
instance call the instance member function.
 The C++ language defines two operators, called member selector
operators, for this purpose.

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this pointer

 If there is only one copy of a member function, how can that function
be used by one object at one time and by another object at another
time?
 C++ adds a pointer (a variable that holds the address of an object) to
each member function.
 The function code is applied to the data members of the object
pointed to by the this pointer.

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Hidden Parameter

 How does an instance member function get a this pointer?

 It is added as a parameter to the instance member function by the
compiler as shown below:

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Explicit Use of this Pointer

 We can use the “this” pointer in our program to refer to a data

member
 The this pointer cannot be used in the initialization list of a
constructor because at that point, the host object has not been
constructed; however, it can be used in the body of the constructor if
needed.

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Class Data Member

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Class Data Member or Static Data
Member
 A Class data member is a data member that belongs to the class.
 It is shared by all the instances of a class.
 We use the keyword “static” to declare a class data member

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Example

 We want to keep track of the number of current instances in our

program.
 We can create a static data member, called count, which is initialized
to 0.
 All constructors increment this static member every time an instance
is created.
 The destructor decrements it when an object is destroyed (goes out
of scope).

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Declaring Static Data Members

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Initializing Static Data Members

 A static data member does not belong to any instance, which means
it cannot be initialized in a constructor.
 So it must be initialized after the class definition.

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Class Member Function

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Static (or class) Member Functions

 Since a static data member is normally private, we need a

public member function to access it.
 Although this can be done by an instance member function,
normally we use a static member function for this purpose.
 A static member function is not associated with any
instance.

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Declaring Static Member Functions

 A static member function, like a static data member, belongs to the

class.
 It should be declared inside the class but must be qualified with the
keyword static.

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Defining Static Member Functions

 There is no difference between the definition of a static member

function and an instance member function.
 We cannot use the const qualifier because there is no host object.

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Calling Static Member Functions

 A static member function can be called either through an instance or

through the class
 To call a static member function through an instance, we use the
same syntax we use to call an instance member function
 To call a static member function through the class, we use the name
of the class and the class resolution operator (::).

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Calling Static Member Functions
Contd..
 We cannot use a static member function to access an instance data
member because a static member function does not have the hidden
this pointer, which defines the instance that needs to be referenced.
 On the other hand, an instance member function can be used to
access static data members (the this pointer is not used), but we
usually avoid this.
 A good practice is to use instance member functions to access
instance data members and static member functions to access static
data members.

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Example

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