Compiler says syntax error when I see nothing wrong

Development Programming & Scripting
1

I don’t know how this broke. I was trying to give an unrelated method input parameters, that didn’t work, then when I removed them this starts breaking. The error literally says syntax error: identifier 'Puzzle'.

// Part of Instruments.h
#include "Puzzles.h"

...

public:
	Instruments();
	~Instruments();

	void SetWorld(Puzzle *A, Puzzle *B); // Compiler error
	void Print();

	void RefreshAll();
	void RefreshLights();
	void RefreshPortalColor();
	void RefreshMonitorNumber();
	void RefreshEnergyLevel();

	void CopyLights();

Which doesn’t make sense because I’m including Puzzles.h which as Puzzle defined.

// Puzzles.h
class Puzzle{
	protected:
	int id;
public:
	int GetID(){return id;}
	virtual bool IsSolutionCorrect(){return false;}
	//virtual bool IsSolutionCorrect(Instruments *inst, Input *input){return false;}
};

Am I missing something?

2

So it seems my header isn’t even being compiled. I do know what do.

3

What do you mean your header file isn’t being compiled? Are you getting a “fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: ‘Puzzles.h’: No such file or directory”? Are your header files in your Source/.../Public folder?

4

No I’m not getting any errors like that. The only error I’m getting is syntax error: identifier 'Puzzle'. So it sounds like my Puzzle class isn’t being defined. I’m trying to use Puzzle as an interface and I have another class that uses variable of Puzzle as method parameters, so its being included in multiple headers for other classes.

5

This could happen if you have two headers that depend on each other. Instead of #include Puzzles.h class, you could use a forward declaration. Just put the line class Puzzle; in your Instruments.h file, above the Instruments class definition and add #include Puzzles.h to your Puzzles.cpp file.

6

I forgot about forward declaration before when I was using a single source. I tried including every header where methods were using class types as parameters which I now see is a bad idea. That solved my first problem that caused this one. Thanks.

7

Solved using forward declaration. See comments.

8

Converted the comment to an answer :-). Please mark it as correct so I get my karma!