无法使用 get 函数返回对象数组

Question

I'm programming a simple blackjack game for a university exam. The game has no graphic, it print everybody on the console. The project has three classes: Deck, Card, Special Card. I want to show you only the Deck class because it's there my problem. In Deck class there is a paramater deck which is an array of Cards (array of object) "Card * deck[52]" it's the definition. In the function buildDeck() this array of Card is implemented (every location of the array is filled with different Cards. Now I want to have a function that return this deck so I can use it in the main. I post my code of Deck.h and Deck.cpp

DECK.H
#ifndef DECK_H
#define DECK_H
#include "Card.h"

class Deck
{
    public:
        Deck();
        void buildDeck();
        void mixDeck();
        Card * getDeck();

    private:
        const char * H = "hearts";
        const char * D = "diamonds";
        const char * C = "clubs";
        const char * S = "spades";
        Card * deck[52];
};

#endif // DECK_H

And here it is the .cpp

#include <iostream>
#include "Deck.h"
#include "Card.h"
#include "Special_Card.h"
using namespace std;

Deck::Deck(){}

void Deck::buildDeck(){
    //here we got a series of for statements which create the deck 
    //and assign every location of the array to a different card. I 
    //won't post this part to keep the code simple
}

Card * Deck::getDeck(){
    return deck;  //HERE I GOT THE ERROR
}

When I try to build the application at the line 57 (the line where I put the comment "//HERE I GOT THE ERROR") I got this error:

error: cannot convert 'Card**' to 'Card*' in return

Have you got any idea on how to fix this?

Answer 1

you declared deck as an array of pointers to class Card while you want to return a pointer to class card so you can either return one element from yhe array deck:

Card * Deck::getDeck(){
           return deck[0];  // or any other element
 }

or if you want to return the whole array of pointers you can declare the function as:

Card** Deck::getDeck(){
    return deck;  //
}

Answer 2

Just to answer your question: if you declare member variable deck as Card * deck[52] , then this denotes an array of 52 pointers to card objects, whereas a signature Card* getDeck() indicates a single pointer to a card object, not a pointer to an array of pointers.

Hence, to get rid of the error, you would have to write

Card ** getDeck();