Hands-On Design Patterns with C++

The problem with arguments

Everyone who has worked on a sufficiently large C++ system at some point has had to add arguments to a function. To avoid breaking the existing code, the new argument is often given a default value's which usually retains the old functionality. That works great the first time, is OK the second time, and then one has to start counting arguments on every function call. There are other problems with long function declarations as well, and if we want a better solution, it is worth our time to understand what they are before trying to solve them. We begin this section with a more in-depth analysis of the problem before moving on to the solution.