Defining Class Types

Class types are defined using class specifiers. Class types can be declared using elaborated type specifiers as shown in Type Specifiers. The class specifier consists of:

• The class, struct or union keyword.

• The class heading includes the class name and the applicable template heading.

• Optionally, a colon and the base list which identifies the base classes that the class being defined inherits from.

• Braces ({}) containing the class member declarations.

Class names are introduced as identifiers immediately after the compiler processes them (before entry into the class body); they can be used to declare class members. This allows declaration of self-referential data structures, such as the following:

// defining_class_types.cpp
// compile with: /c
class Tree
{
public:
   void *Data;
   Tree *Left;
   Tree *Right;
};

See Also

Reference

Overview of Classes

Change History

Date	History	Reason
October 2008	Deleted repeated text.	Customer feedback.