Question

I’m trying to write a program, but I can’t figure out why my private member function can’t access my private data members. Will somebody please help? Here’s my function. nStocks, capacity, and slots[] are all private data members, and hashStr() is a private function.

bool search(char * symbol)
{
    if (nStocks == 0)
            return false;

    int          chain = 1;
    bool         found = false;

    unsigned int index = hashStr(symbol) % capacity;

    if (strcmp(symbol, slots[index].slotStock.symbol) != 0)
    {
            int start = index;
            index ++;
            index = index % capacity;
            while (!found && start != index)
            {
                    if(symbol == slots[index].slotStock.symbol)
                    {
                           found = true;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                            index = index % capacity;
                            index++;
                            chain++;
                    }
            }
            if (start == index)
                    return false;
    }

    return true;
}

Here is the private members section of my .h file:

private:
    static unsigned int hashStr(char const * const symbol); // hashing function
    bool search(char * symbol);

    struct Slot
    {
            bool    occupied;
            Stock   slotStock;
    };

    Slot    *slots;                     // array of instances of slot
    int capacity;                   // number of slots in array
    int nStocks;                    // current number of stocks stored in hash table

Please let me know if I can provide any additional information.

Answer 1

Your code creates a non-member function called search. You need to change:

bool search(char * symbol)

To:

bool ClassName::search(char * symbol)

Replace ClassName with the name of the class.