Is it good practice for a function to return data?

Z

zalzon

Is it good practice in C++ for a member function to return data or is
it better that data is stored in private member variable and printed
in the member function?

should i be using

int function1()
{
....
return i
}

and then call it from main()

main()
{
int i = function1();
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}


or

function()
{
....
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}
 
E

E. Robert Tisdale

zalzon said:
Is it good practice in C++ for a member function to return data
or is it better that data is stored in private member variable
and printed in the member function?

Should I be using

int function1(void) {
....
return i;
}

and then call it from main()

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
int i = function1();
printf("Value of i is %d", i); return 0;
}

or

void function(void) {
....
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}

You should try to avoid "side effects" --
input and output are side effects.
They change the state of the program.
In C++ you should write:

std::cout << "Value of i is " << i;
 
D

Daniel T.

zalzon said:
Is it good practice in C++ for a member function to return data or is
it better that data is stored in private member variable and printed
in the member function?

should i be using

int function1()
{
....
return i
}

and then call it from main()

main()
{
int i = function1();
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}


or

function()
{
....
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}

In this spicific example, I would say that the first (function1) would
be the better choice. It can be used to output the value of 'i' (as
shown) and it can be used in contexts where the value isn't usposed to
be output.
 
D

Dave Townsend

zalzon said:
Is it good practice in C++ for a member function to return data or is
it better that data is stored in private member variable and printed
in the member function?

should i be using

int function1()
{
....
return i
}

and then call it from main()

main()
{
int i = function1();
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}


or

function()
{
....
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}

Its almost always bad practice to print data from member functions,
generally
clients of the class want just to get the value, not print it out - which in
a realworld
program would be unwanted both because of the volume and the lack of
context.
What's more the data might not might not even be seen on STDOUT.
If your data is just simple types like int, char, etc,
the client can easily generate his own output functions, if the data is a
more complex
type is usually a good idea to provide (friend) formating function which
works with the
base output stream class - in this way the client can format output in many
differnet forms,
on the output or in a memory stream to produce his own output.

dave
 
J

Jerry Coffin

zalzon said:
Is it good practice in C++ for a member function to return data or is
it better that data is stored in private member variable and printed
in the member function?

That depends.
should i be using

int function1()
{
....
return i
}

and then call it from main()

main()
{
int i = function1();
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}

First of all, using printf in C++ is rarely a good idea.
or

function()
{
....
printf("Value of i is %d", i);
}

IMO, it's perfectly reasonable for a class to overload the insertion
and/or extraction operators to do I/O on complete objects. One common
(and useful) idiom for that is to have a virtual member function to do
the I/O, and have it invoked from a global overload of operator<< or
operator>>, as applicable. In that case, a member function doing I/O
makes perfect sense.

OTOH, if your member function's basic idea is to produce a value
(which you happen to be printing out at the moment) then having it do
the I/O as well probably isn't such a great idea.

There are a couple more possibilities. One is to put the computation
(or whatever) into a base class that also has a (possibly pure)
virtual function that handles processing the output. Then a derived
class can specify how the output will be processed by overloading that
virtual function.

A similar possibility is to pass a parameter that specifies how to
process the output -- one way is to pass a pointer to a function to be
invoked on the output (this more or less matches the version above
with virtual functions). Another is to use an iterator, and write the
output to the iterator. In this case, you can easily put the output
into something like a collection, or you can pass a
std::eek:stream_iterator, which will write the data to a stream.

Choosing between these isn't necessarily easy. One of the basic
precepts, however, is that a function should generally do one thing,
so you should usually think about what the function does and act
accordingly. If the function's intent is "print out X" then doing the
I/O probably makes sense. If its intent is "compute X" then it almost
certainly should NOT print it out. If its intent is to produce a
(perhaps large) number of X, then one of the final versions (e.g.
virtual function or iterator) may make the most sense.
 
J

Jerry Coffin

[ ... ]
You should try to avoid "side effects" --
input and output are side effects.

So you think programs should avoid doing input and output? Assignment
is also a side-effect, so you apparently think that should be avoided
as well.

That's certainly possible -- in fact, people have been doing it in
Lisp, ML, and a number of other functional languages for years. I
don't see C++ as being particularly well-suited to this style of
programming though...
 
E

E. Robert Tisdale

Jerry said:
E. Robert Tisdale wrote:

[ ... ]
You should try to avoid "side effects" --
input and output are side effects.

So you think programs should avoid doing input and output?
Assignment is also a side-effect,
so you apparently think that should be avoided as well.
Yes!

That's certainly possible --
in fact, people have been doing it
in Lisp, ML, and a number of other functional languages for years.
I don't see C++ as being particularly well-suited
to this style of programming though...

C++ *is* well-suited to this programming style --
it just isn't anal about it.
 
M

ma740988

(e-mail address removed) (Jerry Coffin) wrote in message

[...]
IMO, it's perfectly reasonable for a class to overload the insertion
and/or extraction operators to do I/O on complete objects. One common
(and useful) idiom for that is to have a virtual member function to do
the I/O, and have it invoked from a global overload of operator<< or
operator>>, as applicable. In that case, a member function doing I/O
makes perfect sense.

I believe I'm following you here so if I were to re-write the above
statement in terms of source code:

class X
{
int Jdx;
friend std::eek:stream& operator << (std::eek:stream& os, X const& x);
public:
virtual void std::eek:stream& Print ( ostream& os ) { os << Jdx; }
}

friend std::eek:stream& operator << (std::eek:stream& os, X const& x)
{
return x.Print(os);
}

So far so good?

Now heres where this approach gets interesting from the perspective of
an apprentice. For the purposes of discussion, assume class X has 10
member data, three of which is - say - line of sight positions with
units direction cosines.
Occassionally I'm interested in outputting all 10 member data.
Similarily, there are times when I'm interested in outputting only the
line of sight positions.

Perhaps irrelevant, but lets also assume the environment allows one
the opportunity to type in the name of a function and pass parameters
to function calls. Upon doing that the function executes. In any
event, how do you approach the print function?
OTOH, if your member function's basic idea is to produce a value
(which you happen to be printing out at the moment) then having it do
the I/O as well probably isn't such a great idea.

There are a couple more possibilities. One is to put the computation
(or whatever) into a base class that also has a (possibly pure)
virtual function that handles processing the output. Then a derived
class can specify how the output will be processed by overloading that
virtual function.
For instance?
A similar possibility is to pass a parameter that specifies how to
process the output -- one way is to pass a pointer to a function to be
invoked on the output (this more or less matches the version above
with virtual functions). Another is to use an iterator, and write the
output to the iterator. In this case, you can easily put the output
into something like a collection, or you can pass a
std::eek:stream_iterator, which will write the data to a stream.

This sounds like
vector<int> Vec(5);
copy (Vec.begin(), Vec.end(), ostream_iterator<int>(cout, ' '));

Yes/No?

Now how would you map said approach to a class X?
Choosing between these isn't necessarily easy.

Agreed. There are times when one's faced with multiple classes and a
need to instrument data. Your first option is straightforward in the
sense that each class could maintain their own print function. A
while back I overheard a professor discussing the creation of an
'instrumentation' class which supports the concept of plug-in. In
essence, you'd plug-in (assuming I understand the prof) the
instrumentation class into class X and sure enough/somehow your data
will be extracted for you. That's a novel idea and sounds suprisingly
efficient. Truth is, the idea is incomprehensible/makes no sense to
me.
 
J

Jerry Coffin

(e-mail address removed) (ma740988) wrote in message
[ ... ]
class X
{
int Jdx;
friend std::eek:stream& operator << (std::eek:stream& os, X const& x);
public:
virtual void std::eek:stream& Print ( ostream& os ) { os << Jdx; }
}

friend std::eek:stream& operator << (std::eek:stream& os, X const& x)
{
return x.Print(os);
}

So far so good?

Yup, reasonable so far -- though this only makes sense if X is going
to (at least potentially) be a base class, in which case its dtor
should usually be virtual as well.
Now heres where this approach gets interesting from the perspective of
an apprentice. For the purposes of discussion, assume class X has 10
member data, three of which is - say - line of sight positions with
units direction cosines.
Occassionally I'm interested in outputting all 10 member data.
Similarily, there are times when I'm interested in outputting only the
line of sight positions.

You have a couple of possibilities here. One would be to have the
class' output function write out all the data, and then have a
function to return the LOS data, which can be written out separately.

Another would be for the LOS data to be stored in a separate class of
its own, and have an instance of that class in the other class.
Without knowing more about what you're doing with it, it's hard to
guess whether that's a good idea though.

Yet another distinctly different possibility would be to create a
manipulator that defines HOW the item will be written out. In a few
cases this can make a lot of sense, but in many other cases it can be
a pretty awful kludge.

[ ... ]
For instance?

Here's a class I wrote a long time ago to process all the files in a
specified directory tree (that fit a specified mask). The base class
(Search) finds the applicable files. The derived class I've included
simply prints out the full path to each file that was found. Another
derived class might process a file by deleting it, doing a backup on
it, encrypting it, or whatever.

class Search {
// Automates searching a directory (and optionally its subdirectories)
// for a file then processing the file as specified in a derived
class.
//
char *mask_;
char oldpath[FILENAME_MAX];
int doSubdirs_;

public:

// The actual processing to be done on files that are found MUST be
// specified in the derived class.
//
virtual void process(FileEntry *)=0;

void doSearch() {
// The real guts of Search - carries out the actual search.
FileEntry *entry_;

// First look for files in the current directory fitting the
// filename pattern.
//
for (
entry_ = new FileEntry(mask_);
entry_->found();
entry_->next() )
{
process(entry_);
}
delete entry_;

// Then look for directories in the current directory. These
// names do NOT have to fit the filename string.
//
for (
entry_ = new FileEntry("*");
entry_->found();
entry_->next()
) {
if ( entry_->isSubdir()) {
SetCurrentDirectory(entry_->name());
doSearch();
SetCurrentDirectory("..");
}
}
delete entry_;
}

Search(char *mask, int recursive = 1)
: mask_(mask), doSubdirs_(recursive)
{ // Save original directory before starting.
GetCurrentDirectory(FILENAME_MAX, oldpath);
}

~Search() {
// And restore the original directory when we're done.
SetCurrentDirectory(oldpath);
}
};

class Whereis : public Search {

public:

Whereis( char *mask, int recursive = 1)
// By default, a whereis is recursive.
: Search(mask, recursive)
{}

void process(FileEntry *entry ) {
char current[FILENAME_MAX];

GetCurrentDirectory(sizeof(current), current);
// A whereis processes a file by simply printing it out.
std::cout << current << "\\" << *entry << std::endl;
}
};

[ ... ]
This sounds like
vector<int> Vec(5);
copy (Vec.begin(), Vec.end(), ostream_iterator<int>(cout, ' '));

Yes/No?

Sort of, but not really. This is simply taking some existing data and
copying it to another place. I was thinking more along the lines of
something that creates the data, but deposits the output where the
iterator directs it to.
Now how would you map said approach to a class X?

Given what you've described, I probably wouldn't. :)
 

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