Question

If I have a class with a private variable that’s supposed to hold an array of pointers to another class, is the following syntax correct?

class MyClass
{
    private:
        int arraySize;
        SomeOtherClass* classPtr[];
}

Later, when I want to dynamically allocate memory for this array in a function in MyClass that accepts an ifstream, reads from a file, and fills the array, would I do it like this?

void createArray(std::ifstream& fin)
{
    //the first int is the array size
    fin >> arraySize;
    string tempString; //the file is formatted string int string int etc.
    int tempInt;

    classPtr[arraySize];

    for(int i = 0; i < arraySize; i++)
    {
        fin >> tempString;
        fin >> tempInt;
        //assume the constructor is defined
        classPtr[i] = new SomeOtherClass(tempString, tempInt);
    }

Thanks for your time in advance.

Answer 1

That’s incorrect. You cannot yet use variable length arrays in C++

That should be

SomeOtherClass** classPtr;

And in createArray()

...
classPtr = new SomeOtherClass*[arraySize];
...

And yes, forget everything I said and use std::vector