Abstract identifiers...

[alanor]

Hi, I'm pretty new to C++, hence why I'm posting in the beginners' section.

This may seem like a stupid or obvious question, but is there any way of manipulating class variables based on the end users' input? For example, you have a class called 'person', and you want the user to be able to name that class however they wish when it is created. A way I've found of doing it (though in a way forbidden by ISO standards):

void initPerson()
{
    std::cin >> pInput; // where pInput is a string variable that the constructor will use for the object name
    person $pInput; // create an object with the name enclosed in the pInput variable
}

Basically I want the user to be able to specify in a non-complicated way what objects and their variables they want to work with, and from there modify them; but in a way that's compliant with ISO standards (apparently the dollar sign is not). The purpose is so I don't have to hardcode everything in that vein.

Sorry if any of this is confusing.

[helios]

No. Identifiers must exist at compile time. That's one of the differences between interpreted and compiled languages.
There's something similar you can do, though:

std::map<std::string,Class> objects;
std::string str=/*...*/;
objects[str]=Class(/*...*/);

A map (also called "dictionary") is an associative structure. What it does is associate a unique key to a value (in this case, an std::string to a Class). One of the most common uses of maps is storing variables created at run time.

[alanor]

Ah, this looks promising. Thanks for you help, Helios.