Question

How do you make a variable name where you create a variable and then in brackets the variable number? (By the way, I’m just guessing out how the code should be so that you get what I’m trying to say.) For example:

int var[5];
//create a variable var[5], but not var[4], var[3], var[2], etc.

Then, the variable number must be able to be accessed by a variable value:

int number = 5;
int var[number]; //creates a var[5], not a var[4], etc.
int var[2]; //creates a var[2], not a var[1], etc.
cout >>var[number];
number = 2;
cin << var[number];

If I’m way off track with my “example”, please suggest something else. I need something similar to this for my game to operate, because I must be able to create an unlimited instance of bullets, but they will also be destroyed at one point.

Answer 1

It looks like you are looking for the functionality provided by std::map which is a container used to map keys to values.

Documentation of std::map

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Example use

In the below example we bind the value 123 to the integer key 4, and the value 321 to key 8. We then use a std::map<int,int>::const_iterator to iterate over the key/value pairs in our std::map named m.

  #include <map>

  ...

  std::map<int, int> m;

  m[4] = 123;
  m[8] = 321;

  for (std::map<int, int>::const_iterator cit = m.begin (); cit != m.end (); ++cit)
    std::cout << cit->first << " -> " << cit->second << std::endl;

output:

  4 -> 123
  8 -> 321