Structs in Classes (program flow)

[gcampton]

I need to parse a large amount of command line arguments. I was thinking the way I could do this from main was to have a class that dealt with this, but then I would need to pass-back, or pass-to another class all the various chunks of info.

The easiest way I thought of doing this would be a struct, but then I haven't used them before additionally all the examples I've seen do not have structs from within classes.

I'm wondering if it's possible to do this, and if so do I need the same struct in the class and main (so a copy in each) or do I reference the struct in the class by class.struct.data.
Or should I just chuck in a pile of set/get methods to deal with the data and throw out the notion of using a struct?

[m4ster r0shi]

I'd go with get methods. And if you want, you can overload the [] operator for convenience.

This could help -> http://cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/26251/#msg140026

Boost provides a good solution too -> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_43_0/doc/html/program_options.html

[gcampton]

Really so it can't be done? That's silly... you can have nested structs, you can create structs with objects/classes as it's fields(although it's an expensive copy doing that).
I figured you could do it the other way around as well.

[m4ster r0shi]

It can be done, I suppose, but it seems a bit redundant to me... You already have the data inside the class you use to parse the command line, why would you want to copy it to another construct?

[gcampton]

Yeah I suppose, I thought it would be easier than 8+ lines of getThis() getThat(); in my main.

I figured out how to do it:

class Class {
public:
  // constructors and members

  struct ClassStruct {
  };

  ClassStruct method(int x, std::string y, char c);
};

Class::ClassStruct Class::method(int x, std::string y, char c)
{
  // definition
}

Now I just need to figure out if it's worth it :P

[gcampton]

Better way: (because I finally read my lecture notes, and found it)

// rec in rec header 

#ifndef REC05_H
#define REC05_H

  struct recPersonName {
    char first[30+1];
    char surname[30+1];
  }; 

  struct recStudent {
    unsigned id;
    recPersonName name;
    recDate born;
    recDate enrolled;
  }; 
#endif

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

#include "rec05.h"

int main()
{
  recStudent a1[10], a2[21];
  // do something with it.

  return 0;
}