Design and Implementation Issues

Defining good class interfaces goes a long way toward creating a high-quality program. The internal class design and implementation are also important. This section discusses issues related to containment, inheritance, member functions and data, class coupling, constructors, and value-vs.-reference objects.

Containment ("has a" Relationships)

Containment ("has a" Relationships)

Containment is the simple idea that a class contains a primitive data element or object. A lot more is written about inheritance than about containment, but that's because inheritance is more tricky and error-prone, not because it's better. Containment is the work-horse technique ...

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