Question

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What is this weird colon-member syntax in the constructor?
C++ initialization

I have just received a header file in a C++ program, and I cannot figure out what this line of code does:

Card(Value faceValue=deuce, Suit suit = clubs):
suit(suit), faceValue(faceValue) {}

What does the : mean, and why does replacing it with a ; (as I thought I should) break the code?

Sorry for the generalness of this question, but could someone please explain the purpose of these two lines?

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

This looks like a constructor for the Card class. The part after the : is an initializer list, initializing the values of member variables (or parent classes, but I don’t think that’s applicable in this case). The body of the constructor is empty because everything it needed to do was done in the initializer list.