Return a “NULL” object if search result not found

Question

I\'m pretty new to C++ so I tend to design with a lot of Java-isms while I\'m learning. Anyway, in Java, if I had class with a \'search\' method that would return an object

Answer 1

You can easily create a static object that represents a NULL return.

class Attr;
extern Attr AttrNull;

class Node { 
.... 

Attr& getAttribute(const string& attribute_name) const { 
   //search collection 
   //if found at i 
        return attributes[i]; 
   //if not found 
        return AttrNull; 
} 

bool IsNull(const Attr& test) const {
    return &test == &AttrNull;
}

 private: 
   vector<Attr> attributes; 
};

And somewhere in a source file:

static Attr AttrNull;

Answer 2

In C++, references can't be null. If you want to optionally return null if nothing is found, you need to return a pointer, not a reference:

Attr *getAttribute(const string& attribute_name) const {
   //search collection
   //if found at i
        return &attributes[i];
   //if not found
        return nullptr;
}

Otherwise, if you insist on returning by reference, then you should throw an exception if the attribute isn't found.

(By the way, I'm a little worried about your method being const and returning a non-const attribute. For philosophical reasons, I'd suggest returning const Attr *. If you also may want to modify this attribute, you can overload with a non-const method returning a non-const attribute as well.)