Question

I’m trying to make a simple game in c++, I’m almost complete but I keep running into this error. I’m sure these are syntax errors, I’m just not sure on how to fix them.

Board::Board()
{
    side = 6;
    Piece[][] spaces = new Piece[6][6];
    for (int row = 00; row < side; ++row)
    {
        for (int column = 0; column < side; ++column)
        {
            spaces[row][column] = new blankPiece;
        }
    }
}

Here is what eclipse is saying:

..\Board.cpp: In constructor 'Board::Board()':
..\Board.cpp:13:7: error: expected unqualified-id before '[' token
..\Board.cpp:18:30: error: no match for 'operator=' in '((Board*)this)->Board::spaces[row][column] = (operator new(8u), (<statement>, ((blankPiece*)<anonymous>)))'
..\/Piece.h:14:1: note: candidate is: Piece& Piece::operator=(const Piece&)

Answer 1

This is illegal:

Piece[][]

C++ does not store a 2-dimensional array as an array of pointers, but rather a flat series of subarrays. Therefore all but the last bound must be specified.

Also, new is unnecessary and undesirable if the array size is fixed. Simply use this.

Piece spaces[6][6]; // that's all!

Finally, the entries in the array are Piece objects, not pointers. Initializing them to blankPiece (whatever that is) should be unnecessary because the default (no-argument) constructor Piece::Piece() should initialize the object to the blank state. To reinitialize, use

myPiece = Piece();

---

If the array size is variable, best practice is to use std::vector instead of new[]. Here is the most common approach to two-dimensional vector:

typedef vector< vector< Piece > > Board;
Board spaces( 6, vector< Piece >( 6 ) );

That is a little ugly, and you might look into alternatives like boost::multi_array.