How can I make a variable always equal to the result of some calculations?

Question

In math, if z = x + y / 2, then z will always change whenever we replace the value of x and y. Can we do that in programming

Answer 1

This sounds like the XY problem (pun intended).

From the sound of it, you are not really writing code according to good object oriented practices. I would advise you not to use the "tricks" other people have suggested, but to actually learn how to make better use of OO structure.

Before I go into that, note that assignment is distinct from an equality relation. The = in C++ is assignment, which is not the same as the = in maths. There are some (but not many) programming languages that do support equality relations, but C++ is not one of them. The thing is, adding support for equality relations introduces a heap of new challenges, so it's not as simple as "why isn't it in C++ yet".

Anyway, in this case, you should probably be encapsulating your related variables in a class. Then you can use methods to obtain the "up-to-date" information. For example:

class Player {
    std::vector inventory;
    int cash;
public:
    int inventory_total();
    int net_worth();
}

//adds up total value of inventory
int Player::inventory_total() {
    int total = 0;
    for(std::vector::iterator it = inventory.begin(); it != inventory.end(); ++it) {
        total += *it;
    }
    return total;
}

//calculates net worth
int Player::net_worth() {
    //we are using inventory_total() as if it were a variable that automatically
    //holds the sum of the inventory values
    return inventory_total() + cash;
}


...


//we are using net_worth() as if it were a variable that automatically
//holds the sum of the cash and total holdings
std::cout << player1.net_worth();

I admit that adding this behaviour to a class is quite a bit more complicated than saying z = x + y, but it really is only a few extra lines of code.

That would be very annoying and error prone if you forgot to call the function somewhere.

In this case the object doesn't have a net_worth member variable, so you can't accidentally use it instead of calling the function.