I'm new to c++ and i'm trying to make a simple game engine. I am trying to make a game object and component system.
I have a base class for all object and I am trying to store all children of the object in an array inside the class. But i get an error when trying to make an array of the class inside the class.
class Object {
public:
Object children[]; //This is where I get the error
};
Is there a way to do this? If not, how can I work around this issue?
Object children[] is a fixed size array. For these types of arrays, the size needs to be known at compile time or else an error will be flagged by the IDE (the compiler might ignore it as the size of it is 0 but would flag a warning).
You cannot do Object children[some_amount] as till be an incomplete type. So your option is to use a dynamically resizable array.
For this, C++ standard library provides an excellent option in the name of std::vector. To use this you must include the vector header file. The way to use it is simple, for your case you can use it by this: std::vector<Object> children; and elements can be added at runtime using the std::vector<>::push_back() function.
Further information: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/vector
Object children[100] is invalid inside the Object class since the class itself is incomplete at that point, could you edit that as well
std::vector.