Why can't you initialize data members within a class?

Answer 1

You can. Every constructor has an initialise segment immediately before the body.

class myClass

{

public:

myClass(): // note the colon: initialisation segment follows...

myInt( 0 ),

myChar( '0' )

{

myPtr = new char; // you can also initialise members in the body.

// if you have a lot of members and several constructors, create

// a private init() method to maintain a consistent initialisation.

}

private:

char myChar;

int myInt;

char * myPtr

};