Question

I’m trying to understand a part of my professor’s code. He gave an example for a hw assignment but I’m not sure how to understand this part of the code..

Here is the code:

void addTask(TaskOrAssignment tasks[], int& taskCount, char *course, char *description, char *dueDate)
{
    tasks[taskCount].course = course;
    tasks[taskCount].description = description;
    tasks[taskCount].dueDate = dueDate;         
    taskCount++;
}

Question: Is “tasks[taskCount].course = course;” accessing or declaring a location for char course?

I hope I could get this answered and I’m pretty new to this site too.

Thank you.

Answer 1

tasks[taskCount].course = course;

Let’s break this down a piece at a time. First of all, we are using the assignment operator (=) to assign a value of one variable to another variable.

The right hand side is pretty simple, just the variable named course which is declared as a char*.

It is assigned to the variable tasks[taskCount].course. If you look at the parameters of the method, you can see that tasks is declared as an array of TaskOrAssignment objects. So tasks[taskCount] refers to one of the elements of this array. The .course at the end refers to a field named course in that object. Assuming that this code compiles, that field is declared as a char* in the TaskOrAssignment class.

Most likely, both course variables represent a string of characters. (This originates from C.) When all is said and done, both course and tasks[taskCount].course point to the same string buffer.