Styjun

I'm coding a checkered board game where the board is a two-dimensional vector that holds a Square object, and the Square holds a Piece. Using a nested for-loop, I'm initializing a new Square object in each slot in the 8x8 vector - but when I add a Piece to one Square, it's adding a Piece to every single Square. I think that, somehow, each slot in the vector is only pointing to one Square, even though I'm initializing a new Square every time.

I've tried this with a two-dimensional vector of Square objects as well as with a vector of Square pointers. Currently I'm using the vector of pointers: vector<vector<Square*>> _board;

 // initializing an empty board
 _board = ,,,,,,,;

 // adding a new Square to each of the 8x8 slots
 string colorAlternator = WHITE;
 for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) 
 for (int j = 0; j < 8; j++) 
 _board[i].push_back(new Square(colorAlternator, make_tuple(i,j)));
 if (colorAlternator == WHITE) 
 colorAlternator = BLACK;
 else 
 colorAlternator = WHITE;
 
 
 

 // placing a piece 
 /* placePiece() is a function of Square
 * (p2Pieces.at(0) is a piece being pulled from elsewhere)
 */
 _board[0][1]->placePiece(*p2Pieces.at(0));

In another function called view(), it prints out a visualization of the board (excuse my inelegant implementation, it will be fixed with a for-loop shortly!):

for (int i = 7; i >= 0; i--)
 "
 << board[i][3]->displayToken() << " 

This should be printing every Square as being blank except for the one I placed the Piece in - but it's printing each Square out as containing the Piece I just added.

Any ideas what's causing each slot in the vector to be linking to the same Square? (Or is that even what's happening?)

update: here is the implementation for placePiece(), displayToken(), and supporting method containsPiece() in class Square:

Piece* _piece;

void Square::placePiece(Piece &piece) 
 _piece = &piece;


bool Square::containsPiece() 
 return _piece != nullptr;


string Square::displayToken() 
 string displayStr = " ";

 if (containsPiece()) 
 displayStr = _piece->getToken();
 

 return displayStr;