类的简介--------英文文献翻译.docVIP

英文翻译 英语原文： . Introducing Classes The only remaining feature we need to understand before solving our bookstore problem is how to write a data structure to represent our transaction data. In C++ we define our own data structure by defining a class. The class mechanism is one of the most important features in C++. In fact, a primary focus of the design of C++ is to make it possible to define class types that behave as naturally as the built-in types themselves. The library types that weve seen already, such as istream and ostream, are all defined as classesthat is,they are not strictly speaking part of the language. Complete understanding of the class mechanism requires mastering a lot of information. Fortunately, it is possible to use a class that someone else has written without knowing how to define a class ourselves. In this section, well describe a simple class that we canuse in solving our bookstore problem. Well implement this class in the subsequent chapters as we learn more about types,expressions, statements, and functionsall of which are used in defining classes. To use a class we need to know three things: What is its name? Where is it defined? What operations does it support? For our bookstore problem, well assume that the class is named Sales_item and that it is defined in a header named Sales_item.h. The Sales_item Class The purpose of the Sales_item class is to store an ISBN and keep track of the number of copies sold, the revenue, and average sales price for that book. How these data are stored or computed is not our concern. To use a class, we need not know anything about how it is implemented. Instead, what we need to know is what operations the class provides. As weve seen, when we use library facilities such as IO, we must include the associated headers. Similarly, for our own classes, we must make the definitions associated with the class available to the compiler. We do so in much the same way. Typically, we put the class de