Cheat Engine

[manc]

I understand the syntax of classes, how to declare them, and how to declare an object or instance of them. What I do not understand is the REASON or the purpose of using classes. I've been trying to learn them for a few days now, but every tutorial I find just talks about syntax and constructors, destructors, etc. Someone told me that they were for making wrappers easy to make, and so on. Basically, to me they just seem like retarded structs that try to complicate things. I don't see the point of making things private when I'm the only one touching my code anyways. Can someone clarify?

If anyone has any more insightful links that explain the purpose of classes and how to use them, that would be great

Alternatively, if someone wants to write a small example(maybe as a wrapper, not so sure myself), that would be awesome as well.

Thanks for any help , manc.

[P.S.] - C++

[lurc]

Classes are in-general the same as structures, but the only difference is the ability to do more then access variables. Unlike a structure you can declare methods, constructors, destructors, etc.

The reason classes are so widely used is because of they act as there own little space. Instead of having 50 functions all having to do with different tasks, classes group certain tasks together. In a certain aspect they provide a certain structure to things kind of like namespaces do, but classes are more dynamic.

Like for instance if you wanted to store an array of students names, grades, averages, etc.

Functionally speaking we'd declare arrays of variables such as:

#define STUDENT_COUNT 3
LPTSTR lpszNames[STUDENT_COUNT];
DOUBLE dMarks[STUDENT_COUNT][4]; // Four marks per student.
DOUBLE dAverage[STUDENT_COUNT];

DOUBLE CalculateAverage() { ... }

Now using an object we can do this:

class Student
{
LPTSTR lpszName;
DOUBLE dMarks[4];
DOUBLE dAverage;

DOUBLE CalculateAverage();
};

Then in our code provide an array of students.

Student *students[4];

Now these things are pretty much the same thing, the only difference is the how the code is wrapped.

Functionally the function is out in the open, and all the variables are available the the source file, but what if you wanted the variable to be accessible to anyone who includes the header file? This is where classes also have an upper hand, instead of having to make a get function to retrieve the variable from the source code you simply can make the variable public in a class and retrieve it.

Classes just simplify certain aspects of coding, although some things I like to stay clear of objects.

[manc]

Thanks lurc
I never really thought of having other people use my header files, that's why it wasn't too apparent to me.

Definitely helped though.

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

[Slugsnack]

it depends how you do it. whether you create it locally or dynamically by allocating memory. that is for structs at least. not sure about classes. i think classes are created dynamically by allocating memory as well though