#include & circularity

[NickPaul]

Hey. Here is the situation.

File ControlCentre.h:

#include "Receiver.h"
...
class ControlCentre{
   ...
   vector<Receiver> recs; ****ERROR Receiver not declared in this scope****
   ...
}

File Receiver.h

#include "ControlCentre.h"
...
class Receiver{
   ...
   Receiver(...., ControlCentre* cc);
   ...
}

Ok. So as you can see, I'm trying to make it so the receiver can communicate with the control centre (its parent). However I seem to be having some trouble with the include statements. (Note: see the error line above).

1. Is this how you could go about allowing 2 way communication between classes (children and parents). And,

2. If so, how can I fix this?

Thanks for any help,

Nick.

[firedraco]

See:
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/articles/10627/

Should have everything you need.

[stravant]

Receiver doesn't actually need the implementation of ControlCenter because it only ever points to it, whereas ControlCenter actually needs Receiver's implementation because it uses it as a value-type.

The solution would be to only use a forwards declaration of ControlCenter in Receiver.h rather than including the whole header, like so:

class ControlCenter;

class Receiver {
...

In general you should avoid including a header file for a class if you only need to use that class as a reference type, not a value type.