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

Yes, you can do do the following:

Animal a;
if( happyDay() )
    a = Animal( "puppies" );
else
    a = Animal( "toads" );

That will call the constructors properly.

EDIT: Forgot one thing... When declaring a, you'll have to call a constructor still, whether it be a constructor that does nothing, or still initializes the values to whatever. This method therefore creates two objects, one at initialization and the one inside the if statement.

A better way would be to create an init() function of the class, such as:

Animal a;
if( happyDay() )
    a.init( "puppies" );
else
    a.init( "toads" );

This way would be more efficient.