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Chapter 29:

How To Write Programs that Find Member Functions at Run Time

You have already learned about programs that work with arrays of integers, of integer pointers, of cylinders, and of cylinder pointers. Now, you learn about analyze_train, a program that works with an array of railroad-car pointers. The basic analyze_train program introduced in this chapter reads railroad-car–type numbers and displays a report listing railroad-car–type names.

The analyze_train program is a keystone program, because it brings together many concepts, including C++'s mechanisms for reading, displaying, testing, conditional execution, iteration, and pointer dereferencing.

Once you have learned about the basic analyze_train program introduced in this chapter, you will be ready to tackle many other C++ mechanisms, each of which is introduced in subsequent chapters through modifications to the analyze_train program. Some modifications expose more sophisticated ideas, such as inheritance through a class hierarchy and run-time function selection using virtual functions. Other modifications introduce commonplace mechanisms that have been skipped over so as to expose you to C++'s strengths more quickly.