Question

If I have a class, MyClass, can I declare an array of MyClass on the heap, within the constructor of MyClass?

I can do this in C# but it doesnt seem to like it in C++?

I also get an error about no appropriate constructor for type MyClass??

class MyClass
{
    public:
        MyClass(int);
    private
        MyClass* array;
};


MyClass::MyClass(int size){
    array = new MyClass[size];
}

Answer 1

In order to have an array of something, said something has to be default-constructible. Your MyClass isn’t since it needs an int to be constructed.

What C# does is comparable to:

MyClass** array = new MyClass*[size];

Where pointers are default constructible, so its allowed. Basically, whenever you do SomeObject in C# its the equivalent of SomeObject* in C++. Except that the code would be horribly inefficient, even worse than its C# counterpart, and there would be leaks everywhere.