Working around Global Variables and Pointers

I am implementing a physical problem using OOP. I have two classes called "Room" and "Particle". Room as properties like temperature, volume, etc. Particle have properties such as mass, velocity, position, etc. I start by defining a Room object and giving it properties. I then define thousands of Particle object that are supposed to move around in the room depending on the properties of the room and the particle. To simulate the movement of a given particle, I've defined a method in the "Particles" class called "MoveParticle". Everytime I call this function, the particle moves.

The MoveParticle method depends on the properties of the room that the given particle is in. How can I access this data (properties of the Room object) as the particle and room are different objects?

In C/C++, I would define a pointer in the "Particles" class that points to a specific "Room" object, so that whenever I want to access properties in of the Room object, the pointer can go and access it. But I don't think I can do this in MATLAB.

Another work around would be to define the Room object as a global variable, however, that seem to be considered a bad practice.

Other alternatives is to pass the Room object as a argument in the MoveParticle method or include Room object as a property in the Particle class. However, that seems to be computationally inefficient since a copy of Room object is created in every Particle object which consumes a lot of memory.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

Since each Particle and each Room represent a unique physical object they should probably be handle classes with handle semantics. Each Particle could have a property representing the Room that contains it and each Room could have a property holding an array of the Particle objects inside it.

So if P was a Particle and R the Room it's in, the moveParticle method called on P could reference P.containingRoom.Size to get the Size property of R from P's property containingRoom.

[Roshan Mathew Tom]

That's seem to be exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.