Question

I’m trying to access the method a() in Foo by creating a new object from Foo and calling its duplicate method (duplicate creates a new Foo object). Then I call ::a() since I should have access to the class. But it’s not working. Can anyone explain why?

#include <iostream>
using std::cout;

class Foo {
    public:
        int a() { return 5; }

        Foo *duplicate() {
            return new Foo();
        }
};

int main() {

    Foo foo;

    Foo *a = foo.duplicate()::a(); // should return 5

    cout << a;

}

Answer 1

You must use the -> operator to access members of object pointers. So try this:

foo.duplicate()->a();

And you cant assign 5 (an integer as returned by the Foo::a() method) to Foo *a, why are you trying to do that?