Is a struct declaration using numbers possible?

[Marcel18167]

I want to write a program that helps me improve my English. I want it to have a database of words and their translations. For this I used struct.

struct vocable
  {
  int number;	
  int level;
  char word[99];
  char translation[99];
  char definition[999];
  };
  

vocable 1 {1, 1, "hello", "Hallo", "Wird genutzt um jemand zu grueßen."}; 
vocable 2 {2, 1, "goodbye", "Tschuess", "Wird genutzt um sich zu verabschieden."};

You see I want the declaration to be useable as a number, so I can do this:

int i;
time_t t;
int random;
int j;

time(&t);
srand((unsigned int)t);   
random = rand() % 65 + 1;  /* To get a random number */


for ( j=0; j<3; j++) 
{	
  if (random == j.number)
  { 
  cout << 1.word << endl;
  }
}

Sadly, this does not work. You, for whatever reason, can't use numbers to declare a new struct variable.
I have been thinking (and googling) about alternative ways but I really want to stick to the usage of struct.
If anyone knows how to do this than I would be very pleased. Thank you!

[laserlight]

The identifier naming rules say that identifier names cannot start with digits, so these lines would already contain errors:

vocable 1 {1, 1, "hello", "Hallo", "Wird genutzt um jemand zu grueßen."}; 
vocable 2 {2, 1, "goodbye", "Tschuess", "Wird genutzt um sich zu verabschieden."};

What you can do is to create an array or vector of these vocable objects, e.g.,

auto vocables = std::array<vocable, 2>{
    vocable{1, 1, "hello", "Hallo", "Wird genutzt um jemand zu grueßen."},
    vocable{2, 1, "goodbye", "Tschuess", "Wird genutzt um sich zu verabschieden."},
};

Now your loop can be something like:

for (size_t j = 0; j < vocables.size(); ++j)
{
    if (random == vocables[j].number)
    {
        cout << vocables[j].word << endl;
    }
}

although you could also consider a range-based for loop, e.g.,

for (const auto& vocable_obj : vocables)
{
    if (random == vocable_obj.number)
    {
        cout << vocable_obj.word << endl;
    }
}

[2kaud]

Why do you want to hold number as part of struct vocable? Why not have random index directly the array holding the data? Consider

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
using namespace std;

struct vocable
{
	int level;
	char word[99];
	char translation[99];
	char definition[999];
};

const vocable vocs[] = {
	{1, "hello", "Hallo", "Wird genutzt um jemand zu grueßen." },
	{1, "goodbye", "Tschuess", "Wird genutzt um sich zu verabschieden." }
};

int main()
{
	const size_t No_vocs = sizeof(vocs) / sizeof(vocs[0]);
	srand((unsigned int)time(NULL));

	cout << vocs[rand() % No_vocs].word;
}

In this, extra elements can be added to the vocs array without knowing how many elements there are as that is calculated at run-time.

It also might be worth considering having the data stored in a file that is read into an array/vector as part of the program. In this way the data can be changed/added just be editing the file rather than having to change and recompile the program every time.

[wolle]

In this, extra elements can be added to the vocs array without knowing how many elements there are as that is calculated at run-time.

It also might be worth considering having the data stored in a file that is read into an array/vector as part of the program. In this way the data can be changed/added just be editing the file rather than having to change and recompile the program every time.

I don't want to be nit-picky but the size of the vocs array will be calculated and fixed at compile-time. Neither a C style array nor an std::array can ever change size at runtime. For that a dynamic array such as std::vector is needed. That would be the better option if the OP wants to store the vocable data on file.