Question

the following is my index.h class

class index
{

struct node {
        string item;
        int counter;
        vector<int> pageNumber;
    };

public:
    node* newNode (string word);
    ...

private:
    vector<node*> indexStructure;
    int lineCounter;
    int indexSize;

};

In my index.cpp class I have a method definition as the following:

node* index::newNode (string word)
{
    node* temp = new node();
    temp.item = word;
    temp.counter = 1;
    temp.pageNumber = new vector <int> (10, -1);
    temp.pageNumber[0] = lineCounter / 40;
    return temp;

}

when I compile, it tells me “node does not name a type” even though it is defined in the struct in index.h and my private vector variable can have the type node*.

Answer 1

node is a nested class in index and thus it is called index::node within the global namespace.

Note that you can omit the index:: from within the function body and thus only have to say index::node in the signature in your cpp file, since this is within “global namespace”.