Create objects in conditional c++ statements

Question

I am learning c++, and I just got to the object oriented chapter. I have a question about creating objects inside if statements.

The problem I\'m working on says

Answer 1

First off, you cannot create an object within a conditional statement and use it after the conditional statement: the two branches of the conditional statement create a scope each and any object created within in destroyed a the end of the branch. That is, you need to come up with a different approach. The simplest approach is probably to delegate the creation of the object to a function which returns the objects as appropriate:

Report makeReport() {
    if (enter_company_name()) {
        ...
        return Report(name, company);
    }
    return Report();
}

...
Report report = makeReport();

An alternative approach is to use the ternary operator to conditonally create the Report one way or another:

bool get_company_name = enter_company_name();
std::string name(get_company_name? read_name(): "");
std::string company(get_company_name? read_company(): "");
Report report = get_company_name? Report(name, company): Report();

All of these approaches assume that the Report class is actually copyable.