Error- request for member ' ' in ' ' which is of non-class type ' '

[brandona15]

I keep getting the error

"error: request for member 'firstname' in 'object2', which is of non-class type 'employee()'"

I have searched other forums and it appears the problem is when initializing object2. People have said to use
employee object2;

rather than,

employee object2();

but that brings the error,

"error: no matching function for call to 'employee::employee()'"

So I am unsure on what to do now.
Here is the bulk of my code. Left the function definitions out.
I am trying to initialize object2 by using the modifiers.

  using namespace std;

class employee
{
protected:

public:
string firstname, designation;
double salary;
// constructor
    employee (string fname, string desig, double sal);
//accessors
    string get_first();
    string get_designation();
    double get_salary();
//modifiers
    void set_first(string fname);
    void set_designation(string desig);
    void set_salary(double sal);
//overloaders
    void print(char c)
    {
        cout << "printing: " << c << endl;
    }
    void read (char charact)
    {
        cout << "Reading: " << endl;
        cin >> charact;
    }
    void compare(employee obj1, employee obj2)
    {
       if (obj1.salary == obj2.salary)
            cout <<"Employee salaries are the same"<<endl;
       else
            cout <<"Employee salaries are different"<<endl;
    }
    double add(employee obj3, double num1)
    {
        obj3.salary = obj3.salary + num1;
        return obj3.salary;
    }
    string addname(employee obj4, string name1)
    {
        obj4.firstname = obj4.firstname + " " + name1;
    }
};
    employee::employee (string fname, string desig, double sal)
    {
        firstname = fname;
        designation = desig;
        salary = sal;
    }

class consultant: public employee
{
    int tenure;
public:
// constructor
    consultant (int tenure);
// mutators and accessors
    int get_tenure();
    void set_tenture(int tenure);
};
    consultant::consultant (int tenure) : employee(firstname, designation,salary)
    {
    }
int main()
{
    employee object1("Name1","Location1",5000.00);
    employee object2();

    object2.firstname = "Name2";


return 0;
}

Any help is greatly appreciated

[JayhawkZombie]

You haven't provided a default constructor for "employee", which you need if you want to use employee object2;

Defining a default constructor should fix the issue.

employe::employee()
{
    //do whatever you want with the values
    string = ""; //one example - just an empty string
}

[brandona15]

Would lines 47-52 not be the default constructor?

employee::employee (string fname, string desig, double sal)
    {
        firstname = fname;
        designation = desig;
        salary = sal;
    }

[JayhawkZombie]

employee::employee (string fname, string desig, double sal)
    {
        firstname = fname;
        designation = desig;
        salary = sal;
    }

We need to provide a constructor that takes no arguments at all, which would look like the one that I give in my other post on this topic.

employe::employee()
{
    //do whatever you want with the values
    string = ""; //one example - just an empty string
}

If you just do employee object2; with the constructor you are using, your program doesn't know how to set the values for firstname, designation, or salary.

[brandona15]

Thanks that seems to have worked!

However now I am running into the problem of having the user input the details of another object. I am trying to take the input using the >> operator.

So I declare object 3 like,

employee object3;

Then could I do something like

 string name;
object3.firstname >> name >> endl; 

Or would I need to create another void function that takes in user input and sets it to each variable found within the object? Or perhaps it be best to modify this?

 void employee::set_first(string fname)
{
    firstname = fname;
}

[JayhawkZombie]

Ah, I see what you want to do. Look up operator overloading.

You still have to use cin >> ...

You can do this
cin >> object3.firstname and do that for each of the variables (be careful about the input buffer).

endl is only for output. It won't work for "cin".

[brandona15]

Okay yeah that makes sense. the prompt I was given only included the ">>" and did not mention cin >> so I figured a separate function would be needed. But that works, so thanks a bunch the help and for the quick reply!