Some minor inconsistencies

[email protected] · February 25th, 2009, 03:59 PM

I've finally gotten around to reading your book, and I am enjoying it. Especially the software engineering tips in the beginning chapters.

However, I've noticed a couple of inconsistencies in the coding style. For example, on page 165 in the code example for objects on the heap we see:

Code:

 SpreadsheetCell*   myCellp = new SpreadsheetCell();

But on page 167 we see:

Code:

 SpreadsheetCell   *myCellp = new SpreadsheetCell();

Seems like a minor nit, but for people trying really hard to understand the code, minor things like this can really hang one up.

klep · February 27th, 2009, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by [email protected]

Seems like a minor nit, but for people trying really hard to understand the code, minor things like this can really hang one up.

Thanks for pointing that out -- we'll be sure to be more consistent in the future. For what it's worth, I prefer attaching the * to the type because, in my mind, the pointer is part of the type. It's not a SpreadsheetCell, it's a SpreadsheetCell*. However, that notion breaks down a bit in certain cases, like when you declare multiple values:

<code>
SpreadsheetCell* a, b; // actually declares 1 pointer and 1 object
</code>

<code>
SpreadsheetCell *a, *b; // does what you want, but moves the * formatting
</code>