Deleting all data in a struct array

Hello all,

im tryig to input a txt file, store it in an struct array, output that data into a .dat file and from then on the programm is to read from the .dat file, the thing is i no longer need the info stored in the struct.

a ROUGH example of my code is:

Code:

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struct staff
        {
                char givenname[30];
                char surname[30];
                char title[5];
                char position[30];
                char department[10];
                char roomnum[30];
                char phonenum[4];
                char username[30];
        };

staff unistaff[300];

//inputs
//outputs etc etc

delete[] unistaff;

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anyway comes up with the warning "[Warning] deleting array 'staff unistaff[300]'
ive tryed many variations of delete, such as:

delete unistaff
delete unistaff[300];
delete[] unistaff[300]
delete staff
etc.

any help appreciated

You have allocated the struct array in the program stack, which means, it is not dynamically gotten from the heap.

The stack is actually part of your program (your program's definition) and exists for the life of your program. You can't change its size, larger or smaller, at runtime.

delete and delete[] are used for getting rid of (freeing) memory you have specifically obtained at runtime. So, hopefully now you can now see, if YOU didn't get the storage, YOU can't free it.

Todd

wait, im just talking about removing all the data within it, but still keeping the struck itself for later use, so its like it was at the begining of the program.

Then just loop through it and assign null values to everything. (well, in this case, set a string of length 0 to everything, or zero out each string completely.)

And, at the beginning of the program, since you didn't initialize it when you declared it, it has random garbage data in it. I guess you could come up with an algorithm to fill it with random garbage data... ;)

Todd

how do i assign a null value to a char

To cause a C string (a char array) to have a zero length, you put a ZERO in the first element position.

Can someone give me an exapmle, i cant seem to get this

What do you want to do? As has been said you cannot delete because it's not dynamically allocated. To clear the struct a simple memset would suffice or you can create a constructor in the struct that would memset the members.

Yeah i understand what ur saying, im just not sure how to do it, im first year student.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by grimuth

Yeah i understand what ur saying, im just not sure how to do it, im first year student.

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Excepting the delete[], this is C, not C++. Are you sure you don't want those character arrays to be strings?

But if they are supposed to be char arrays, you have to do what Todd says. I'm pretty sure even first-year students learn how to wield an equal sign:

Code:

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chararray[0] = 0; //set first position of array to zero

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If you no longer need the data in the structs, just leave them. You don't need to clear out the data.