How structs are initialized.

[g.eckert]

I have a struct.

struct Thing{
    int value;
    char title;
}

Is there a way i can make default values for the struct. So when I make one of the structures they initialize to the default values.

Thing myThing;

cout<< myThing.value<<endl;

So when i cout the value member it would print a default value.

[laserlight]

Provide a default constructor, e.g.,

struct Thing {
    Thing() : value(123), title('a') {}

    int value;
    char title;
};

[g.eckert]

Excellent. This is exactly what i was looking for. My reference book does not mention the constructor use at all. Thanks

[Lindley]

Then either it's a "C" book, or it's one of those that finds it convenient to treat structs and classes differently even though they're almost the same thing. I guarantee it'll talk about constructors when you get to classes....

[g.eckert]

The book is a C++ book. Although it does talk about constructor use in classes they are not mentioned in the "structured data" chapter which is where structs are introduced. I found it very weird that the book did not mention anything about setting "default" values for structs. So i had to ask about it.

[Russco]

structs and classes are essentially the same thing. The only difference between them is default member/inheritance is public for structs and private for classes.

class A {};
class B : A // private inheritance
{
   int b; // private
};

struct C {};
struct D : C // public inheritance
{
   int d; // public
};

Other than that there is afaik no differences between structs and classes.

[Lindley]

FYI, for plain-old-data types at least (not sure about others), you can do something like

struct mystruct
{
    const char *str;
    int i;
    double d;
};

int main()
{
    mystruct s = {"hello", 5, 10.0};
}