COSC 1320 - C++ Programming
Bob Comer, Professor, CIT/COSC


Assignment 8 - Payroll Version 4.0

Be sure to read through Chapter 10 (Pointers) before beginning this assignment. In assignment 7 you defined a class to represent the information for one employee, and used an array of class objects to hold the employee master file. If the actual number of employees is much smaller than the array size, this would waste a lot of memory. One way around this problem is to use an array of pointers to employee objects to represent the master file. Then dynamically allocate one employee object at a time as the employee data as is read in.

Rewrite your Payroll program from Assignment 7 to dynamically allocate the memory used to store the employee information from the master file. Use an array of pointers to employee objects. Each employee object will be dynamically allocated to hold the master file data.

Your new program should produce the same output as the previous version.

Hints

I am not asking you to use a dynamically allocated array as described in section 10.8 of the Gaddis textbook. An array of pointers is not the same as a dynamically allocated array.

In the Example C++ Programs section of this web site there are several example programs that illustrate using arrays of structs, arrays of objects, and arrays of pointers to structs or objects:

Arrays of structs, sequential search

itemstru.cpp

itemfile.txt

Arrays of pointers to structs with DMA

itemptr.cpp

itemfile.txt

Arrays of objects, sequential search

itemclass.cpp

itemfile.txt

Arrays of pointers to objects with DMA

itemptr2.cpp

itemfile.txt


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Copyright: 2004 by the Austin Community College
Department of Computer Studies. All rights reserved.
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Bob Comer
Last updated: November 24, 2004