In the previous papers, objects were constructed in the most basic way because no arguments were passed into the constructor. With a no-argument constructor, all objects are constructed using the same initial values. For the cShape class, this basic approach worked because Part focused primarily on encapsulation mechanics. It turns the attention to inheritance and the development of class hierarchies. With the development of class hierarchies, it needs a richer set of construction options.

Chapter Contents:

• 11.1 Specifying Initial Values
• 11.1.1 Private Member Functions
• 11.2 Generalizing the Constructor
• 11.2.1 Constructor Helper /private/ctor_ini.m
• 11.2.2 Constructor Helper Example /private/ctor_1.m
• 11.3 Test Drive
• 11.4 Summary
• 11.5 Independent Investigations

Inspec keywords: software engineering; object-oriented programming

Other keywords: cShape constructor; object construction; constructor redux; encapsulation mechanics; class hierarchy; construction option; no-argument constructor; Matlab

Subjects: Software engineering techniques; Object-oriented programming