Thread: problem with a tutorial

hi everyone, i am fairly new to c++ and in one of my first works i had to implement the method "rand()" and since i had no idea how to use it i went looking for a tutorial and found this website.

the tutorial i am refering to is this one : http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/random.html

so i started reading it and when i got to the code part i copied it and tried to compile it but i got this problem :

../main.cpp: In function `int main()':
../main.cpp:23: error: `cout' undeclared (first use this function)
../main.cpp:23: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in.)
../main.cpp:23: error: `endl' undeclared (first use this function)
make: *** [main.o] Error 1


line 23 refers to this : cout << rand() << endl;

if you do not wish to go to the linked page here is the code :

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <time.h>
int main()
{
/*
Declare variable to hold seconds on clock.
*/
time_t seconds;
/*
Get value from system clock and
place in seconds variable.
*/
time(&seconds);
/*
Convert seconds to a unsigned
integer.
*/
srand((unsigned int) seconds);
/*
Output random values.
*/
cout << rand() << endl;
cout << rand() << endl;
cout << rand() << endl;
return 0;
}

any help will be much apreciated.
thank you for the time spent reading my post

The faq is better.

For ease of use, just insert

Code:

using namespace std;

just prior to the 'main' function.

Alternatively and arguably preferably, prefix each of those points giving rise to undeclared errors with std:: eg std::cout, std::endl etc.

You might want to change #include <time.h> to #include <ctime>, too.

edit:

The errors arise because the functions you are calling are declared within the scope of the std namespace. You access the contents of a namespace with either the using directive or by using the fully qualified namespace name. In the former case there are two approaches, the first brings everything into scope - for example, where I suggested 'using namespace std;' above that simply brings everything within the std namespace into current scope. The second use of the 'using' directive brings a single entitiy within the given namespace into scope, eg 'using std::cout' would brings cout into current scope ie make it usable in that form within that part of your program.

There's more information about namespaces in this faq and this tutorial.

You know, you should go read up on the tutorials first before approaching these things. I routinely download code for Unix systems which don't compile on my Windows box, so I have to edit the code to make it work. If you don't even know that cout is part of std (which is what most of the errors are about actually) you should really go back to basics.

In any case, I don't think RoD is still active around here, so it might be sacrilege to edit his craft Quzah would scream at the indentation though.