Why can't I initialize a member of one class as an object of another?

[Liuqahs15]

Hello, I've been having some troubles with classes lately. My issue is this: I want to make a class with a constructor, then make another class with a member which is an object of the first class, and I want to fill in the arguments for the constructor function when I declare this member. Here's an example of the code:

enum func_ability{    high,   medium,   low};

class motion_control{

public:
    bool controller;
    func_ability function;
    float cost;

    motion_control(bool ctrl, func_ability func, float price){
        controller = ctrl;
        function = func;
        cost = price;
    }
};

class Xbox_Game{

private:
    bool online;
    motion_control kinect(false, high, 150.00); //HERE is where my problem is. I know I'm declaring the object properly, yet it still won't work.

};

When I try to build this code, I get the errors:

error: expected identifier before 'false'

error: expected ',' or '...' before 'false'

Is this something you just can't do in C++? Clearly those error messages don't make any sense. The compiler doesn't seem to know what the heck I'm trying to do.

[freddy92]

Pretty sure you need to put the call to motion_control's constructor in Xbox_Game's constructor, not in the class declaration.

[Liuqahs15]

I'll try that, but it doesn't sound right. kinect is going to be a member, so how could I mention it in the constructor without declaring it first? If I declare it without any arguments, it might initialize using the compiler's default constructor, but then I couldn't give it its unique values with my own constructor. Maybe if I made a friend function that acted as a constructor, but then that's beyond the point, really. I'm mostly interested to know if it's possible to initialize an object as a member of a class, calling that object's constructor in the process.

[Athar]

This is done using the initialization list. See
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/general/52866/

With the newest C++ standard this can be done directly like in your attempt, but compiler support isn't quite there yet.

[Liuqahs15]

That's exactly what I was looking for. Works beautifully. I can't believe it hasn't been in the standard longer lol