Beginning Programming with C++ For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19

Programming with Class

In This Chapter

Grouping data using parallel arrays

Grouping data in a class

Declaring an object

Creating arrays of objects

Arrays are great at handling sequences of objects of the same type, such as ints or doubles. Arrays do not work well, however, when grouping different types of data — as when we try to combine a Social Security number with the name of a person into a single record. C++ provides a structure called the class (or struct) to handle this problem.

Grouping Data

Many of the programs in earlier chapters read a series of numbers, sometimes into an array, before processing. A simple array is great for standalone values. However, many times (if not most of the time), data comes in groups of information. For example, a program may ask the user for his first name, last name, and Social Security number. Alone, any one of these values is not sufficient — only in the aggregate do the values make any sense.

You can store associated data of different types in what are known as parallel arrays. For example, I might use an array of strings called ...