Initializing const char * member variable in constructor

[Weikarczaena]

Hi all,

I have a class that defines a window (a popup dialog of sorts), and I want the name of that window to be constant. The only problem is that the name of the popup needs to match the title of the parent window, and I get the name of the parent in the constructor. So how do I go about defining this member variable to be constant and initializing it with a value in the constructor?

I want to do something like this, but I know this isn't allowed:

/* class.h */
class foo {
	public:
		foo(*parentWindowPtr);
		
	private:
		const char *name;
				
};

/* class.c */
foo:foo(*parentWindwPtr parentPtr) {
	name = parentPtr->windowName;
}

Any help is appreciated

- Weikardzaena

EDIT: I should mention that yes the name of the parent window is const char *, and I would like to keep it this way.

[Yanson]

class foo {
	public:
		foo(const char *parentWindowPtr);

	private:
		const char *name;

};


foo::foo(const char *parentWindwPtr):name(parentWindwPtr)
{
}

[Weikarczaena]

Ah yes thank you that worked, but is there a way to do it without initializer lists? I'm just curious.

[Yanson]

but is there a way to do it without initializer lists? I'm just curious.

not that i know of.

[Peter87]

Doing what you do in the first post should be fine because name is not const, it is what name points to that is const.

If you change name to a const pointer const char * const name; you must initialize it in the constructor initializer list as shown by Yanson.