Methods; Inlining

We had already constructs like

{}
class Node {
   ...
   double x() { return xCoord_ ;} 
};

One can put arbitrary functions here, e.g.

{}
class Node {
    ...
    intersectionLogic() {
        // lots of stuff
    }
};

This is called a method of the class. This version is the ``inlined'' version of the method.

Often, this gets so long that one wants to have this outside the class definition. In this case one would write:

{}
class Node {
    ...
    intersectionLogic() ;
};

and somewhere else

{}
Node::intersectionLogic() {
    // lots of stuff
}

Conventionally, one would put the first part into a *.h file, and the second part into a *.cpp file. It is however also possible to leave everything in work.cpp.

Inlined functions/methods are faster during the execution but need more memory and more compilation time.