Noob - Program Keeps Crashing

I am trying to create a program where it will read in the student name, nationality, and grades, and calculate their tuition fee based on those information.

I began to write a bit of code by I have ran into some problems. When I try to run my code, the compiler says "warning C4700: local variable 'name' used without having been initialized" but continues to run the code. Then the program shuts down. What is happening?

In addition, on my fifth line I have "char *firstName;". I know that char* represents a pointer, but what does that mean and why can't I just use a string?

Code:

---

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

struct Student {
        char *firstName;
        char *lastName;
        bool canadianship;
        int grades[10];
};

Student newStudent[10];

void addFirstName() {
        char *name;
        cout << "Student Name: ";
        cin >> name;
        newStudent[0].firstName = name;
}


int main() {
        addFirstName();
        cout << newStudent[0].firstName;       
        return 0;
}

---

You can just use a string. In fact for your program to have any hope of working, you must use a string. In order to use a string, you do have to bring in the string library with #include <string>.

Thank you for the quick reply. How about why my program keeps crashing?

You need to allocate space for you pointers... char *name is only a pointer. You need to allocate the memory for the names...

Code:

---

void addFirstName() {
        char *name = new char[64];
        cout << "Student Name: ";
        cin >> name;
        newStudent[0].firstName = name;
}

---

That should fix the problem

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by icu222much

Thank you for the quick reply. How about why my program keeps crashing?

---

Because you seem to think "string" is spelled "char *"?

Thank you.

Sorry, i thought char * was just another way of declaring a string.

>> Sorry, i thought char * was just another way of declaring a string.

It is. Well, sort of.

Using char* for strings is the C way of doing it, but it works in C++ and is still used by many tutorials/books/instructors. Using the C++ string class is generally preferred in C++, so if you can use that, do it.

If you can't, then you need to allocate space for your char* string. An easy solution is to use a plain char array instead of just a pointer. Then you can allocate space for the string by setting the number of characters in the array. That restricts to a maximum string size, though. Another solution is to use a dynamic array allocated with new[] and destroyed with delete[]. If you're going to do that, though, you really should just use the string class.

Gotcha! Thank you.