Question

I have a class CS which is to represent the co-ordinate system in 3D i.e.(x, y, z)

class CS
{
  private:
        double x;
        double y;
        double z;
}

CS::CS()
{
   x = NULL;//this causes x = 0//i want the address of x to be 0x000000 & not x = 0
   y = NULL;
   z = NULL:
}

I want that the user can create a CS (0, 0, 0).
In the constructor i want to initialise the address of x, y & z to NULL.
this is to differentiate between the user defined (0, 0, 0) & the default value.
I am creating the objects of CS dynamically, so there is no point in using the following code:

class CS
{
  private:
        double *x;
        double *y;
        double *z;
}

CS:CS()
{
    x = new double;
    x = NULL;
    //same for y & z
}

Primarily, i want to manually assign 0x000000 address to any variable(int or double or char) without using pointers.
any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can’t change the positions of x,y,and z to be NULL, since there positions will always be offsets from the CS object. They will always exist. It’s not that CS has an x like you have a car, it’s like CS has an x like you have a head. You can’t not have a head. If they were integers, you would have to make them pointers (like you said you didn’t want to do), because that would be the only way to tell uninitialized from initialized. However, doubles have a magic value that is rarely used:

CS:CS()
: x(std::numeric_limits<double>::quiet_NaN())
: y(std::numeric_limits<double>::quiet_NaN())
: z(std::numeric_limits<double>::quiet_NaN())
{ }

Users probably won’t be setting x, y, and z to (NOT A NUMBER) intentially.