Optional method arguments

[sake]

Hey,

If you don't want to read all this, just look at the bottom part :-P

I'm currently making a Tic Tac Toe game, just for fun, and ran across an interesting subject(for me). I have a method in class Player that can be used for two uses. It can check for a win and check for a possible win. Once it finds a possible win, it puts the X and Y coords of that possible win into a variable, located in the class. But what if I wanted to fulfill a second use of this function and store those X and Y variables in a different class instance of Player, allowing the other player to block that attack? That is to say, this way the function can be used to see if a player can possibly win, or if a player can possibly block a win, and give the exact coordinates of these events. Ok, onto the point: In order to do this, my first idea was to include an optional parameter.

So the prototype would be:

checkForWin(board& gameBoard, player &opponent);
 

With opponent as the optional paramater. In short, how do I make that parameter optional?

Hope this was clear.

Thanks,
Austen

[Prasannaa]

Hi,

You can change your func signature as

checkForWin(board& gameBoard, player *opponent = 0);

this way, you can pass in the player if needed(for the second use of the function). You can also use the following signature

checkForWin(board& gameBoard, player& opponent = player());

but its not normally used, b'cos it creates an object (which may/may not be costly, depends on the object).


Regards
Prasannaa.