Declaring an object before initializing it in c++

Question

Is it possible to declare a variable in c++ without instantiating it? I want to do something like this:

Animal a;
if( happyDay() ) 
    a( \"puppies\" ); //c         


        

Answer 1

If you want to avoid garbage collection - you could use a smart pointer.

auto_ptr p_a;
if ( happyDay() )
    p_a.reset(new Animal( "puppies" ) );
else
    p_a.reset(new Animal( "toads" ) );

// do stuff with p_a-> whatever.  When p_a goes out of scope, it's deleted.

If you still want to use the . syntax instead of ->, you can do this after the code above:

Animal& a = *p_a;

// do stuff with a. whatever