Thread: string inside of a structure?

alright so im making a program to practice strings, pointers and structures. Its a structure that holds information about the members of my band and I want it to output the instrument and gender as a string but im getting errors heres my code so far:

Code:

struct band {
	int age;
	char instrument [20];
	char gender [10];
};

int main ()
{
	char name [50];
	int a;

	band matt;

	matt.age = 14;
	matt.gender = "male";
	matt.instrument = "Lead Guitar";

and im getting these 2 errors:

Code:

error C2440: '=' : cannot convert from 'const char [5]' to 'char [10]'
//and
error C2440: '=' : cannot convert from 'const char [12]' to 'char [20]'

You can only assign string literal to char arrays when you initialize the array. In order for your code to work, you need to use strcpy.

Why don't you use the string class instead? That would make your example work.

memloop: whats the string class? I'm using #include <cstring>

iMalc: would changing my structure to that make the example work or would I have to change it further? and whats up with the std::string thing?

thats simple... You cant just use '=' to give some value to a string of char like you would in some other language because normally they use overloaded operators...

Well, use this simple function:

Code:

char *cpy(char *target, char *source){

    char *start = target;

    while(*source)
        *target++ = *source++;
    *target = 0x00;
    return(start);
}

like this in your code:

Code:

int main (void)
{
        int a;

        band matt;

        matt.age = 14;

        printf("%s", cpy(matt.instrument, "Something")); // see?
        getchar();
        return(0);
}

You could make a class "String" and overload the '+' operator, but I can see that its beyond your current level...

Ps: what you're doing is much more C than C++

alright so i have almost no idea what you guys are talking about. I've been learning off the tutorials on this site but it looks as though they haven't included a lot of stuff. how would you guys recommend I go about learning c++ because it seems like the tutorials on here aren't cutting it.