Click here to hide categories Click here to show left categories

User: Home          welcome : Guest          Log In / Register here     




Class

A class is a group of objects that have common properties and common behavior or functions.

For example consider an object- you. You have certain properties like name, age, date of birth, gender etc. and perform certain operations like move, listen, speak, sit etc. Similarly your friends Gurpreet, Rohit, Saurav, Amit etc. also possess certain properties like name, age, date of birth, gender etc. and perform certain operations like move, listen, speak, sit etc. All these people represent different objects having same properties and same functions. So these all objects can be grouped together to form a class called ‘Person’.

Thus a class is a collection of similar type of objects and an object is an instance of class. The properties of the objects are represented as data members and the functions as member functions.

The members of class can be any of the following 3 types:

(a) Private- Accessible only within the class and by the friend functions of the class. They can not be accessed by the object of the class.
(b) Public- Accessible anywhere, inside or outside the class. They can be accessed outside the class using the object of the class.
(c) Protected- Accessible within the class, by the derived class (in case of inheritance) and by the friend functions of the class. They can not be accessed using the object of the class. Its main use is in the case of inheritance only.

In C++ a class can be defined as under;

Syntax:


class class_name
{
private:
data members;
member functions;
protected:
data members;
member functions;
public:
data members;
member functions;
};
Example:
class person
{
private:
char name[30];
int age;
char gender;
public:
void input_data( );
void output_data( );
};
__________
__________

person p1, p2; //Object creation



Here person is a class that has two objects p1 and p2 that share common properties of name, age and gender and common functions input_data( ) and output_data( ).

Share this article   |    Print    |    Article read by 3151 times
Author:
Rohit kakria
I am software developer, moderator of xpode.com
Related Articles: No related article
Related Interview Questions: No related interview question