Thread: Advantages in struct?

This was an exercise comparing to methods of holding month/days of month data and displaying them. Which would you use and why?

The exercise is from C++ Programming Language 3rd edition 5.9 #7, pg 105.

Code:

// year.cc - to compare an array of structs to an array of cstrings
//           holding  month/day of month data

#include <iostream>
using std::cin;
using std::cout;
using std::endl;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  const char *months[12] = {"January","February","March","April",
			    "May","June","July","August",
			    "September","October","November","December"};

  int daysofmonths[12]={31,28,31,30,31,30,31,30,30,31,30,31};

  struct monthdays{
    char month[10];
    int days;
  };

  monthdays year[12]={"January",31,"February",28,"March",31,"April",30,
		      "May",31,"June",30,"July",31,"August",30,
		      "September",30,"October",31,"November",30,"December",31};

  for (int index=0; index < 12; ++index)
    {
      cout << months[index] << "\t\t\t" << daysofmonths[index] << endl;
    }
  
  for (int index=0; index < 12; ++index)
    {
      cout << year[index].month << "\t\t\t" << year[index].days << endl;
    }

return 0;
}

forgot to declare everything as const oh well

Try calling a function or two

Compare
do_something ( month, days )
with
do_something ( monthdays )

Now imagine you had 20 related items
The first call would have 20 params all of a sudden, yet the 2nd one would remain at 1 parameter

The time_t has never been beat, I say go with that. You can even derive a new structure from the tm time struct [time.h, ctime].