Question

I have the following struct in my C++ code (I am using Visual Studio 2010):

struct mydata
{
    string scientist;
    double value;
};

What I would like to do is to be able to initialize them in a quick way, similar to array initialization in C99 or class initialization in C#, something á la:

mydata data[] = { { scientist = "Archimedes", value = 2.12 }, 
                  { scientist = "Vitruvius", value = 4.49 } } ;

If this is not possible in C++ for an array of structs, can I do it for an array of objects? In other words, the underlying data type for an array isn’t that important, it is important that I have an array, not a list, and that I can write initializers this way.

Answer 1

The syntax in C++ is almost exactly the same (just leave out the named parameters):

mydata data[] = { { "Archimedes", 2.12 }, 
                  { "Vitruvius", 4.49 } } ;

In C++03 this works whenever the array-type is an aggregate. In C++11 this works with any object that has an appropriate constructor.