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Thus, there is no such data type as a string. When you hand over a string to a function, you supply a character pointer that points to the first character in that string. When you want to return a string from a function, you really ask for a pointer to the first character in that string.
For example, when you define the short_name function in the
railroad_car class, you declare that it is to return a character
pointer as follows:
virtual char* short_name ( ) {return "rrc";} // For railroad_car
Similarly, the following defines a short_name function for the
box_car class definition:
virtual char* short_name ( ) {return "box";} // For box_car
Thus, both short_name functions return character pointers.