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

Since c++17, there is now an overhead-free way to do this: std::optional. The code in this case would be:

#include 

std::optional a;
if(happyDay()) 
    a.emplace("puppies");
else
    a.emplace("toads");