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


Assignment 7 - Payroll Revisited

Be sure to read the sections on dynamic memory in chapters 7 and 15 before beginning this assignment. In assignment 6 you defined a class or a struct to represent the information for one employee, and used an array of class objects (or structs) 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 (or structs) to represent the master file. Then dynamically allocate one employee object (or struct) at a time as the employee data as is read in.

Rewrite your Payroll program from Assignment 6 to dynamically allocate the memory used to store the employee information from the master file. Use an array of pointers to employee objects (or structs) that will be dynamically allocated to hold the master file data.

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

Hints

In the Example C++ Programs section of this website 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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Bob Comer
Last updated: Nov 6, 2000