C++ constructor with abstract class

Question

I have this class named soldier,in my project every soldier must have a weapon,and I have 5 different types of weapons,every class of the weapon types inherited from the 'weapon' class. how can I make a constructor in the soldier class so that the soldier can get any type of weapon? I thought about making 5 different constructors for every type of weapon but that doesn't make much sense

Answer 1

Say the Weapon is the base class of all weapons. Say you have 2 weapon types Gun and Knife:

class Weapon { virtual void shot() = 0; }

class Gun : public Weapon { virtual void shot() { cout << "Gun"; }


class Knife : public Weapon { virtual void shot() { cout << "Knife"; }

class Soldier {
   Weapon *weapon;
  public:
   Soldier() : weapon(nullptr) {}
   Soldier(Weapon* w) : weapon(w) {}
   void SetWeapon(Weapon* w) { weapon = w; }
   Weapon* GetWeapon() { return weapon; }
}

In a Real word code you would consider RAII or smart_pointers for holding and deleting Weapon* objects, otherwise memory leaks could occur.

Answer 2

On your Soldier class you can have the following:

#include "weapon.h"

class Soldier {
    Weapon *weapon;
public:
    Soldier(Weapon *weapon) {
        this->weapon = weapon;
    }
};

When you are going to instanciate the class soldier:

Weapon *w1 = new Knife(), *w2 = new M1();
Soldier s1(w1), s2(w2);