Question

I’m trying to make a stack implementation in C++ but when I try to print the stack,
it just prints the first element instead of the whole stack.
I’ve tested it and I’m pretty sure that my Push function is right, but I’m not sure.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "stack.h"

int main(){

    StackElement *stack = new StackElement();
    stack->data = 20;
    stack->Push(30,stack);
    stack->Push(40,stack);

    stack->Print(stack);

}

---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>


class StackElement{

public:

    int data;   
    StackElement* next;     
    StackElement();     
    void StackElement::Push(int value, StackElement *oldElement);   
    void StackElement::Print(StackElement *element); 
};

StackElement::StackElement(){
    next = NULL;
}


void StackElement::Push(int value, StackElement *oldElement){

    StackElement *newElement = new StackElement();                
    newElement->data = value;       
    printf("Element added to stack: %d\n", newElement->data);       
    oldElement->next = newElement;       
}


void StackElement::Print(StackElement *element){

    while(element->next != NULL){       
        printf("%d\n",element->data);       
        element = element->next;    
    }

}

Answer 1

Your code kept loosing the previous pushed element, leaking memory, as @Beta described.

I suggest comparing my code below to your code. You’ll see, I’ve moved the handling of the stack elements outside, just to be able to keep track of the first element. Also, notice that there is no pointer in the main function. That is what we expect from a class.

Stack_element is a struct really as there’s not much point in making the Stack_element itself encapsulated, it is just an implementation detail of Stack.

So here’s my code derived from yours

#include<iostream>

struct Stack_element{
  int data;
  Stack_element*next;
};   

class Stack{
private:
  Stack_element*last_data, first_data;

public:

  Stack():last_data(NULL), first_data(NULL){}  
  void push(int data);
  void print() const;  
};

void Stack::push(int data)
{
  Stack_element*p=new Stack_element();
  p->data=data;
  p->next=NULL;
  if(last_data)
    last_data->next=p;
  else // empty stack
    first_data=p;
  last_data=p;
}

void Stack::print()
{
  for(Stack_element*p=first_data;p;p=p->next)
    std::cout << p->data << std::endl; // ** Do not use printf in c++. Ever. **
}    

and in the main function just call

Stack stack;
stack.push(30);
stack.push(40);
stack.print();

---

REMARK: For a C++ish print you might want to do an ostream& print(ostream& os) instead, where

std::ostream& Stack::print(std::ostream& os)
{
  for(Stack_element*p=first_data;p;p=p->next)
    os << p->data << std::endl;
  return os;
} 

just to be able to write std::cout << stack.print() << std::endl;. The benefit of this is that you can easily redirect to a file.

std::ofstream ofs("yourfile.txt");
ofs << stack.print() << std::endl; // prints to file instead of screen.