1.8. Getting Started with Data¶

We stated above that C++ supports the object-oriented programming paradigm. This means that C++ considers data to be the focal point of the problem-solving process. In C++, as well as in any other object-oriented programming language, we define a class to be a description of what the data look like (the state) and what the data can do (the behavior). Classes are analogous to abstract data types because a user of a class only sees the state and behavior of a data item. Data items are called objects in the object-oriented paradigm. An object is an instance of a class.

1.8.1. Built-in Atomic Data Types¶

We will begin our review by considering the atomic data types. C++ has four main built-in numeric classes that implement the integer and floating point data types. These C++ classes are called int, float, double, and long. The standard arithmetic operations, +, -, *, and / (exponentiation can be done using pow() from the cmath library) can be used with parentheses forcing the order of operations away from normal operator precedence. Other very useful operations are the remainder (modulo) operator, %. Note that when two integers are divided, the integer portion of the quotient is returned and the fractional portion is removed. To get the whole quotient, you must declare one of the numbers as a float.

The boolean data type, implemented as the C++ bool class, will be quite useful for representing truth values. The possible state values for a boolean object are true and false with the standard boolean operators, && (and), || (or), and ! (not). Note that output values for true and false are 1 and 0 respectively.

>>> true
1
>>> false
0
>>> false or true
1
>>> !(false || true)
0
>>> true and true
1


Boolean data objects are also used as results for comparison operators such as equality (==) and greater than ($$>$$). In addition, relational operators and logical operators can be combined together to form complex logical questions. Table 1 shows the relational and logical operators with examples shown in the session that follows.

Table 1: Relational and Logical Operators
Operation Name Operator Explanation
less than $$<$$ Less than operator
greater than $$>$$ Greater than operator
less than or equal $$<=$$ Less than or equal to operator
greater than or equal $$>=$$ Greater than or equal to operator
equal $$==$$ Equality operator
not equal $$!=$$ Not equal operator
logical and $$&&$$ Both operands True for result to be True
logical or $$||$$ One or the other operand is True for the result to be True
logical not $$!$$ Negates the truth value, False becomes True, True becomes False

A C++ variable is created when a name is used for the first time after declaring a type on the left-hand side of an assignment statement. Assignment statements provide a way to associate a name with a value. The variable will hold a piece of data. Consider the following session:

The assignment statement int theSum = 0; creates a variable called theSum and lets it hold the data object 0 (see Figure 3). In general, the right-hand side of the assignment statement is evaluated and the resulting data object is “assigned” to the name on the left-hand side. At this point in our example, the type of the variable is integer as that is the type of the data currently being referred to by theSum. If the type of the data changes, as shown above with the boolean value True, so does the type of the variable (theSum is now of the type boolean). The assignment statement changes value being held by the variable. This is a static characteristic of C++. A variable can hold only one type of data.

Figure 3: Variables Hold Data Objects

1.8.2. Introduction to Pointers¶

The kind of variables we have already used are really identifiers that refer to where in memory we store information. We can store things as basic as integers and double precision floating point numbers, or things more complicated as structure and classes. Whenever we want the information, we can simply use the identifier to access it.

Let’s look at a simple example of storing an integer. The following code declares a variable called varName that has in it a value of 100.

// variable declaration for a single integer value
int varName = 100;


The results of this code may look like the diagram below:

Figure 4: FIXME

When we want to output the value to the console, we use the variable name to do so:

// print out the value we stored to the console, assuming that we
// included the correct headers that define what cout does
cout << varName << endl;


An important question is: Is this method of declaring variables sophisticated enough to handle all the problems we want to solve using programs?

The answer to that question is due to the way that arrays are stored in memory. Although the full details are complicated, the simple answer is that each program is given a specific amount of memory space to run. All statically allocated and locally declared variables are stored in this region, as well as all occurrences of the functions as the program is running. There is enough storage room available for simple variables, but arrays can be of arbitrary size, so there is a limit to how large they can be…otherwise they could crowd out the other variables and executable code in the program.

So where do large arrays get stored? In a region of memory called the heap, where space can be allocated when needed and then freed when you are done.

Once we reserve space to hold data, we store the location of this data in a special variable called a pointer.

We will talk about how to declare a variable to be a pointer first and then show pictorially what is happening.

1.8.2.1. Pointer Syntax¶

When declaring a pointer that will “point” to the memory address of some data type, you use the same rules of declaring variables and data types. The key difference is that there is an asterisk (*) between the data type and the identifier.

variableType *identifier; // syntax to declare a pointer
int *ptrx; // example of a pointer to an integer


White space in C++ generally does not matter, so the following pointer declarations are identical:

SOMETYPE *variablename;
SOMETYPE * variablename;
SOMETYPE* variablename;


However, the first declaration is preferable in each case, as it is clear to the programmer that the variable is in fact a pointer because the asterisk is closer to the variable name.

1.8.2.2. The Address Operator: One simple way to get the pointer information into a pointer¶

Ok, now that we know how to declare pointers, how do we give them the address of where the value is going to be stored? One way to do this is to have a pointer refer to another variable by using the address operator, which is denoted by the ampersand symbol, &. The address operator does exactly what it indicates, namely it returns the address of either (1) a variable, (2) a symbolic constant or (3) a element in an array.

The syntax is shown below, where varName stores the value, and varPntr stores the address of where varName is located:

variableType value;  // a variable to hold the value
variableType *pointer = &value;  // a variable to hold the address for varName


Keep in mind that when declaring a pointer, the pointer needs to be of the same type as the variable or constant to which it points.

Expanding on the example above where varName has the value of 100.

//variable declaration for a single integer value
int varName = 100;
int* varPntr;
varPntr = &varName;


The results of this code may look like the diagram below.

Figure 5: FIXME2

1.8.2.3. Accessing Values from SIMPLE Pointers¶

So, once you have a pointer, how do you access the values associated with that location? You use the asterisk before the pointer variable, which dereferences the pointer, meaning that it will find the location of the value stored where the pointer was referencing.

In other words, varName and *varPntr (note the asterisk in front!) is the __same thing__ in the code above.

Let’s extend the example above to output the value of a variable and its address in memory:

Compiling and running the above code will have the program output the value in varName, what is in varPntr (the memory address of varName), and what value is located at that memory location.

The second output sentence is the address of varName, which would most likely be different if you run the program on your machine.

WARNING: What happens if you forget the asterisk when assigning a value to a pointer and had the following instructions instead?

varPntr = 2000; // Notice that I forgot the asterisk, so varPntr is now referring

// to position 2000 in memory, whatever happens to be there
cout << "After changing \*varPntr, varName now has: " << varName << endl; cout << "varPntr is now pointing to a variable that has the value: " << \*varPntr << endl;


Figure 6: FIXME3

If your compiler does not catch that error (the one for this class may), the first cout instruction outputs

After changing *varPntr, varName now has: 50


which is expected because you changed where varPntr pointing to and NOT the contents of where it is pointing.

The second cout instruction is a disaster because (1) You don’t know what is stored in location 2000 in memory, and (2) that location is outside of your segment (area in memory reserved for your program), so the operating system will jump in with a message about a “segmentation fault”. Although such an error message looks bad, a “seg fault” is in fact a helpful error because unlike the elusive logical errors, the reason is fairly localized.

1.8.2.4. The Null pointer; another simple way to get the pointer information into a pointer¶

The null pointer points to nothing and is often denoted by 0 or the keyword null. The null pointer is often used in conditions and/or in logical operations.

The following example demonstrates how the null pointer works. The variable ptrx initially has the address of x when it is declared. On the first iteration of the loop, it is assigned the value of zero (i.e. null) thereby ending the loop:

Helpful Tip: The null pointer becomes very useful when you must test the state of a pointer, such as whether the assignment to an address was valid or not.

1.8.3. Collection Data Types¶

In addition to the numeric and boolean classes, C++ has a number of very powerful built-in collection classes. Arrays, strings, and tuples are ordered collections that are very similar in general structure but have specific differences that must be understood for them to be used properly. Sets and hash tables are unordered collections.

An array is an ordered collection of zero or more C++ data objects of similar type. Arrays are written as comma-delimited values enclosed in curly brackets. Arrays are homogeneous, meaning that the data objects all need to be from the same class and the collection can be assigned to a variable as below. The following fragment shows a variety of C++ data objects in an array.

>>> int arr[] = {1, 2, 3, 4};
>>> char arr2[] = {'a', 'b', 'c'};
>>> string arr3[] = {"this", "is", "an", "array"};


In order to remember the array for later processing, its reference needs to be assigned to a variable.

Note that the indices for arrays (sequences) start counting with 0. Sometimes, you will want to initialize an array. For example,

>>> int myList[6] = { };
>>> myList
[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]


Strings are sequential collections of zero or more letters, numbers and other symbols. We can get strings from the Standard template library with #include <string> We call these letters, numbers and other symbols characters. Literal string values are differentiated from identifiers by using double quotation marks.

>>> string myName = "David";
>>> myName[3];
'i'
>>> myName.length()
5


Since strings are sequences, all of the sequence operations described above work as you would expect. In addition, strings have a number of methods, some of which are shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Methods Provided by Strings in Python
Method Name Use Explanation
append astring.append(string) Append to string the end of the string
push_back astring.push_back(char) Appends a character to the end of the string
pop_back astring.pop_back() Deletes the last character from the end of the string
insert astring.insert(i, string) Inserts a string at a specific index
erase astring.erase(i, i) Erases an element from one index to another
find astring.find(item) Returns the index of the first occurrence of item

A major difference between arrays and strings is that arrays can be modified while strings cannot. This is referred to as mutability. arrays are mutable; strings are immutable. For example, you can change an item in a list by using indexing and assignment. With a string that change is not allowed.

Tuples are very similar to arrays in that they are sequential containers. We can get a tuple from the Standard template library with #include <tuple> The difference is that a tuple is immutable, like a string. A tuple cannot be changed. Tuples are written as comma-delimited values enclosed in parentheses. For example,

>>> myTuple = (2, 3, 4.96)
>>> myTuple
(2, True, 4.96)
>>> get<0>(myTuple);
2


A set is an unordered collection of zero or more immutable C++ data objects. We can get a set from the Standard template library with #include <set>. Sets do not allow duplicates and are written as comma-delimited values enclosed in curly braces. The collection can be assigned to a variable as shown below.

>>> set<int> mySet = {3, 6, 4, 78, 10}
{3, 6, 4, 78, 10}


Sets support a number of methods that should be familiar to those who have worked with them in a mathematics setting. Table 6 provides a summary. Examples of their use follow.

Table 6: Methods Provided by Sets in C++
Method Name Use Explanation
union set_union() Returns a new set with all elements from both sets
intersection set_intersection() Returns a new set with only those elements common to both sets
difference set_difference() Returns a new set with all items from first set not in second
add aset.insert(item) Adds item to the set
remove aset.erase(item) Removes item from the set
clear aset.clear() Removes all elements from the set

Our final C++ collection is an unordered structure called a Hash Table. Hash Tables are collections of associated pairs of items where each pair consists of a key and a value. This key-value pair is typically written as key=value. For example,

>>> unordered_map<string, string> capitals;
>>> capitals["Iowa"] = "DesMoines";


We can manipulate a dictionary by accessing a value via its key or by adding another key-value pair. The syntax for access looks much like a sequence access except that instead of using the index of the item we use the key value. To add a new value is similar.

It is important to note that the hash table is maintained in no particular order with respect to the keys. The first pair added ('Utah': 'SaltLakeCity') was placed first in the dictionary and the second pair added ('California': 'Sacramento') was placed last. The placement of a key is dependent on the idea of “hashing,” which will be explained in more detail in Chapter 4. We also show the size function performing the same role as with previous collections.

Hash Tables have both methods and operators. Table 7 describes them, and the session shows them in action. The keys, values, and items methods all return objects that contain the values of interest. You will also see that there are two variations on the get method. If the key is not present in the dictionary, get will return None. However, a second, optional parameter can specify a return value instead.

Table 7: Operators Provided by Hash Tables in C++
Operator Use Explanation
[] myDict[k] Returns the value associated with k, otherwise it’s an error
count myDict.count(key) Returns True if key is in the dictionary, False otherwise
erase myDict.erase(key) Removes the entry from the dictionary
Next Section - 1.9. Input and Output