wrong output in struct cum union example

[bhagwat_maimt]

Hi!

I am getting unexpected output in the following code:

#include<conio.h>
#include<stdio.h>
using namespace std;
 struct A {
                union {
                        int age;
                    
                        char name[35];
                };
        };


int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{

	 A a;

	 cout<<"Enter name";

  	 gets(a.name);

	 int l=strlen(a.name);
	 cout<<l<<"\n";
	 
     cout<<"Enter age";
	 cin>>a.age;

	 cout<<"\n";

	 puts(a.name);

	 cout<<"\t"<<a.age;

	 getch();
	return 0;
}

This program display correct age but wrong name... why???

Since both are the members of union and I am accessing both of them with structure

object.....Age is display correct but name display garbage...

Can anybody explain me reason and solution....

thanks
Bhagwat

[SKeane]

You might want to look up what a union actually is. Try to think of it as an OR. You can either look at the age OR you can look at the name. You can't use both at the same time in your example. If you change age, you also change the first few bytes of name. They share a certain amount of memory. Perhaps you wanted a structure rather than a union?

[vart]

probably you want

struct A 
{
   int age;
   char name[35];
};

PS. If you program in C - remove "using namespace std;" and cout
If you program in C++ - go to the correct forum

[bhagwat_maimt]

Thanks to both of u !

Now I have understand what the problem was...

Thanks a lot once again.

Bhagwat

[Salem]

> gets(a.name);
Never EVER use gets() again!

See the FAQ.

[ssharish2005]

It was C++ code on C board and with out using the iostream and non standard header conio.h

ssharish2005