Question

I have a .h file in which I have created a dictionary as follows :-

map < char, string > mydictionary;

I go on to populate the values as :-

string t = "test";
mydictionary['a'] = "asdf";
mydictionary['b'] = t;

When I try to build the project I get errors for the two lines above mentioning C++ requires a type specifier for all declarations. Unfortunately I find the error message quite cryptic and am not sure about how to approach/solve it.

Why does this error happen? How could I solve this issue?

Answer 1

You can’t put statements at global scope; statements can only go in functions. (Note that this is different from variable initializers, which can go in global scope).

You will need to initialize the map in a function, or, (in C++11), use an initializer list:

map < char, string > mydictionary {{'a', "asdf"}, {'b', t}};