Such a royal pain to comprehend on why something so simple can be so cryptic. Back when I was learning VB6 14 years ago, doing empty arrays in structures to be redeclared later wasnt so hard:

Private Type MyStruct
     MyArray() As Byte
End Type

Dim Test As MyStruct

Private Sub Form_Load()
     ReDim Test.MyArray(10) As Byte
End Sub

Even with VB.Net theres no issue:

Public Class Form1

    Private Structure MyStruct
        Dim MyArray() As Byte
    End Structure

    Dim Test As MyStruct

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        ReDim Test.MyArray(10)
    End Sub
End Class

And although itll work in C++ to use a pointer and make it an array later (I think), I still kinda find it funny that you have to go through including the library vector, using vector<your data type here>, Resizing the vector, store the address of the vector into a pointer buffer to be used as an array by static_casting<char *>, load the data into that buffer and possibly put it back into the vector array. Mega fail Microsoft on not keeping it simple.

And although itll work in C++ to use a pointer and make it an array later (I think), I still kinda find it funny that you have to go through including the library vector, using vector<your data type here>, Resizing the vector, store the address of the vector into a pointer buffer to be used as an array by static_casting<char *>, load the data into that buffer and possibly put it back into the vector array. Mega fail Microsoft on not keeping it simple.

Such a royal pain to comprehend on why something so simple can be so cryptic. Back when I was learning VB6 14 years ago, doing empty arrays in structures to be redeclared later wasnt so hard:

Private Type MyStruct
     MyArray() As Byte
End Type

Dim Test As MyStruct

Private Sub Form_Load()
     ReDim Test.MyArray(10) As Byte
End Sub

Even with VB.Net theres no issue:

Public Class Form1

    Private Structure MyStruct
        Dim MyArray() As Byte
    End Structure

    Dim Test As MyStruct

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        ReDim Test.MyArray(10)
    End Sub
End Class

And although itll work in C++ to use a pointer and make it an array later (I think), I still kinda find it funny that you have to go through including the library vector, using vector<your data type here>, Resizing the vector, store the address of the vector into a pointer buffer to be used as an array by static_casting<char *>, load the data into that buffer and possibly put it back into the vector array. Mega fail Microsoft on not keeping it simple.

The second is that I'm not a fan of the C++ stream model.

I've been using C++ professionally for over a decade and have never seen the standard stream library in use. I've only ever used it as part of "hello world" learning exercises

I still kinda find it funny that you have to go through including the library vector, using vector, Resizing the vector, store the address of the vector into a pointer buffer to be used as an array by static_casting, load the data into that buffer and possibly put it back into the vector array.

C/C++ are systems programming languages, that only make the computer do exactly what you tell it to do. C was originally designed to be a "portable assembly language" -- i.e. a language that translates almost directly down to native machine instructions.

If you want to use simpler abstractions (rather than being extremely verbose and precise in your code), then yes, a higher level language like VB is a far better choice for you. C/C++ are for solving a different class of problems than VB, and are designed accordingly.

What do you use for I/O in C++ then? Do you have a go-to portable library, or do you just use something developed in house?

Or the long overdue C++11 way:

char* buffer = Vec.data();

Nice, learned something new today.

Well I just figured out how to load data from a file and store it into a vector declared array that is from a structure:

File.read(reinterpret_cast<char *>(Test.Myarray.data()), Test.Myarray.size());

Alternatively, if not using C++11 and you don't have data(), you can do: &myVector[0]