Checking if a variable is initialized

Question

Seems like this would be a duplicate, but maybe it is just so obvious it hasn\'t been asked...

Is this the proper way of checking if a variable (not pointer) is init

Answer 1

If you mean how to check whether member variables have been initialized, you can do this by assigning them sentinel values in the constructor. Choose sentinel values as values that will never occur in normal usage of that variable. If a variables entire range is considered valid, you can create a boolean to indicate whether it has been initialized.

#include 

class MyClass
{
    void SomeMethod();

    char mCharacter;
    bool isCharacterInitialized;
    double mDecimal;

    MyClass()
    : isCharacterInitialized(false)
    , mDecimal( std::numeric_limits::quiet_NaN() )
    {}


};


void MyClass::SomeMethod()
{
    if ( isCharacterInitialized == false )
    {
        // do something with mCharacter.
    }

    if ( mDecimal != mDecimal ) // if true, mDecimal == NaN
    {
        // define mDecimal.
    }
}