Polynomial class addition operator with rational coefficients

[Math Is Hard]

Ugh! I'm working on my last homework assignment and I can't seem to even get off the ground.
The teacher created a class for rational numbers, and now we are working on some functions for a polynomial class which uses arrays of rationals from his class. My polynomials are arrays of coefficients with each stored at an index position representing the power of x the coefficient is multiplied to.
I'm embarrassed to ask for help because there are 4 files involved: the rational class header and implementation file and the polynomial class header and implementation file.
I know you people have better things to do this weekend, but if anyone is really bored, the assignment and files are here:
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~rclark/10a.1.05w/hw6/hw6.html
It's the polynomial.cpp file where we have to fill in the blanks.
One of the first things I tried to do was the operator overloading to define addition for polynomials. Here's what I tried:

// operator+
polynomial operator+(const polynomial & a,const polynomial & b)
{
	polynomial c;
	for (int num = 0; num < polynomial::SIZE; num ++) //fill array with zeros
		c[num] = 0;
	for (int i = 0; i < polynomial::SIZE; i ++) //compute sum
		c[i] = a[i] + b[i];
	return c;
}

So far, not so good. It would be a huge help if someone could help me get just this piece fixed up. Thanks,
MIH

 

[chroot]

Why does the class's name not appear in the declaration of the function? Does this function appear in the header, inside the class declaration, or in the implementation file?

- Warren

 

[saltydog]

Ugh! I'm working on my last homework assignment and I can't seem to even get off the ground.
The teacher created a class for rational numbers, and now we are working on some functions for a polynomial class which uses arrays of rationals from his class. My polynomials are arrays of coefficients with each stored at an index position representing the power of x the coefficient is multiplied to.
I'm embarrassed to ask for help because there are 4 files involved: the rational class header and implementation file and the polynomial class header and implementation file.
I know you people have better things to do this weekend, but if anyone is really bored, the assignment and files are here:
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~rclark/10a.1.05w/hw6/hw6.html
It's the polynomial.cpp file where we have to fill in the blanks.
One of the first things I tried to do was the operator overloading to define addition for polynomials. Here's what I tried:

// operator+
polynomial operator+(const polynomial & a,const polynomial & b)
{
	polynomial c;
	for (int num = 0; num < polynomial::SIZE; num ++) //fill array with zeros
		c[num] = 0;
	for (int i = 0; i < polynomial::SIZE; i ++) //compute sum
		c[i] = a[i] + b[i];
	return c;
}

So far, not so good. It would be a huge help if someone could help me get just this piece fixed up. Thanks,
MIH

The polynomial class has a data member coeff that holds the coefficients. Thus, need to use the construct:

c.coeff=a.coeff+b.coeff;

Right?

Oh yea, be nice if you could run this through a debugger. Microsoft Visual C++ has a nice one.

 

[chroot]

MIH,

In general, please tell also provide us the compiler (and linker) output when asking questions like this. It's really hard (if not impossible) to diagnose a piece of code like this taken from a larger piece of unknown code. You didn't even tell us why it was "not so good."

- Warren

 

[Math Is Hard]

ok, sorry. I am using MS VC++ v 6. The whole thing (all four files) is at the link I listed in my OP. The class name is polynomial. It's defined in polynomial.h.
Saltydog - yes I believe that's the problem I was having. It was not using that coeff data member. That's where I was screwing up, I bet.
I wasn't sure if it was ok for me to use the brackets [], because I was getting errors (among the jillions of other errors) about [ not being defined. I felt so lost I didn't even know how to describe the problem I was having because there were so many.
Thanks so much for looking at that. I'll go work on this some more.

 

[saltydog]

about [ not being defined.

You got that error because using the construct c implies an "array" of polynomials which you did not define. Use the same c.coeff construct for operator-, a little more complicated looping for operator*, and some if-statements for overloading the output operator and return "os" after you've filled it up with the polynomial.

 

[Math Is Hard]

cheers, SD! this helps a lot.