Once again ... C/C++

Today I am going to talk about C++ instead of basic C. C++ adds several new ideas to C, the biggest of which is Object Oriented Programming. Objects are variables (called classes) that contain other variables and/or functions (called members). There are two ways to create an Object: class and struct

Typically, a class contains both variables and functions and a struct contains only variables, though in newer versions of C++ the two are treated the same. Lets create a struct:

struct Account
{
   int Number;
   float Balance;
};

Notice the semicolon " ; " after the ending bracket is required. To access the two variables I created, I would, first, create a variable of type "Account" then you can access the members of the class with the period operator " . ". Like this:

Account anAcct;
anAcct.Number = 123567;
anAcct.Balance = 0.0f; //"f" tells the compiler it is a float type. use "c" for char.

When you create a class, you can specify a "constructor" and a "destructor" that are automatically processed when the variable is created and destroyed respectively. Both are named the same as the class with no type defined though the destructor has a tilde " ~ " before its name. For instance:

class Account
{
   int Number;
   float Balance;
   Account()
   {
      Number = 0;
      Balance = 0.0f;
   }
   ~Account()
   {
   }

   void SetBal(float B)
   {
      Balance = B;
   }
};

To access the functions inside a class is the same as accessing a variable. I.E. I could call "anAcct.SetBal(1300.45f);". If you were to create a pointer to an "Account" object, you could access the members with the "arrow" operator " -> ". Anything referenced in such a way is treated as the real object and not a pointer. For Instance:

Account anAccount;
Account *pAcct;
pAcct = &AnAccount;
pAcct->Number = 9023;
pAcct->SetBal(10.0f);

Inside a class you can even tell the compiler how to handle operators (such as +, -, =, ==, etc.) using the operator keyword.

I've included two files to show the operator keyword in use:
DataTypes.h - the file that defines the classes.
DataTypes.cpp - the file that has the actual code.

And, finally for today, for an object to create a pointer to itself, it can use the keyword this.