The variable payroll is a 100 element array. This declaration also calls the default constructor so that by the time main() executes, this array has been fully initialized. In main(), it is populated with valid ids, random salaries and names such as "Person 34".
Note that highest is also defined an a reference. This refers to the variable returned from findhighestpaid(), a function that returns a reference to whichever employee has the highest salary. If this was not guaranteed to find one employee, it would be a very bad piece of code. It would be better returning an integer index, with an error value of -1 (for not found) if there was no highest salary but it just illustrates the point.
On the next page : More on example 8_3
