Question

I have a class which I can write like this:

class FileNameLoader
{
     public:
         virtual bool LoadFileNames(PluginLoader&) = 0;
         virtual ~FileNameLoader(){}
};

Or this:

class FileNameLoader
{
     public:
         virtual bool LoadFileNames(PluginLoader&, Logger&) = 0;
         virtual ~FileNameLoader(){}
};

The first one assumes that there is a member Logger& in the implementation of FileNameLoader. The second one does not. However, I have some classes which have a lot of methods which internally use Logger. So the second method would make me write more code in that case. Logger is a singleton for the moment. My guess is that it will remain that way. What is the more ‘beautiful’ of the two and why? What is the usual practice?

EDIT:
What if this class was not named Logger? :). I have a Builder also. How about then?

Answer 1

I don’t see what extra advantage approach two has over one (even considering unit testing!), infact with two, you have to ensure that everywhere you call a particular method, a Logger is available to pass in – and that could make things complicated…

Once you construct an object with the logger, do you really see the need to change it? If not, why bother with approach two?