Member Avatar for AutoC

Hi,

Here's my scenario. I am given records and the datastructure of each column in the records at runtime. A sample looks like this,

char[] | int16 | int32 | double
abcd   | 2     | 96    | 1024 
ghi    | 3     | 104   | 2048

I cannot predefine a structure because I dont know what data types I am gonna be given.How can I store the records? I was thinking of declaring a multidimensional double array and typecasting all the records and then casting back whenever necessary. Does this seem sensible? Is there a better solution?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by embooglement
Member Avatar for AutoC

I dont understand. How do unions help?

Member Avatar for NicAx64

for a example here , you declare a union like this.

union DataStructure
{
  char mCharPtr[20];
  short mInt16;
  int   mInt32;
  double mDouble;
};

and the size of the DataStructure is just 20. not 20+2+4+8 =40.

and if you still can't understand just go and do a exercises on this
page.
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialC++Structures.html
you will understand why so.And still not understood just ask.

Edited by NicAx64 because: n/a
Member Avatar for mrnutty

look into boost::any

>>I cannot predefine a structure because I dont know what data types I am gonna be given

Why not? Well do you at least know if its a string or a number?

Member Avatar for embooglement

This seems like a ridiculous task. What about taking the input, and sorting it into different vectors depending on what column it's in? You could probably catch all possibilities with a std::string vector, a double vector, and a int64 vector. Route all strings to the string vector, all floats and double to the double vector, and every size of integer to the int64 vector.

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