I am having trouble in accomplishing certain task in C++ which I am able to do in Pascal / Delphi quite easily.

1st

In Pascal : Type DataBase record = Name:String(25); Cell:String(12); City:String(20); end;

Customer : DataBase;

In C++: class DataBase = {public: char Name[25], Cell[12], City[20];};

DataBase Customer;

OKAY we are good here.

In Pascal : Customer.Name = "Poigahn";

In C++: Customer.Name = "Poigahn"; < Will Not Compile

So I am writing a segment of code that changes the information inside Variable Customer based on Conditions, So I do not want to assign values at time of instance. Also do not want to use the cin function because values are predetermined by programmer. So How do I do this ?

2cnd

In Pascal : With Customer do

Name = "Poigahn";

Cell = " 1234567890";

City = " Somewhere"; end;

or

readln(Name); I can make assignments this way ( useful when there is allot of info to change withinh the class variable )

Rather Than Having to do assignments by doing > Customer.Name = " " or Readln(Customer.Name)

In C++ : I can not find any such function. ( I might be looking right over it since I do not know what the function would be )

Now I have to do cin >> Customer.Name;

or

getline(cin,Customer.Name);

Does anyone know how to do in C++ what I am able to do in Pascal ??

For the first problem.

The problem is you can't just assign a char array ("Poigahn") to another char array (char Name[25]) like that. You'd need to use a function like strcpy. You'd be better off using std::string in place of a char array in the class. It would allow an assignment like this.

[edit]

I think std::string will solve your second issue as well.

The class will eventually be save to a binary file on the disk, so do you not need a structured length that the char[25] gives you versus the string which does not have a structured length ?

That depends on how you are serializing the class, which you don't show in your example.

You could prefix the string with its length in the file, allowing you to know how many characters are in the string.

Something else you might want to look at would be replacing public access to the variables with public getters and setters and making the member variables themselves private. This would allow you to truncate the input string down to the desired number of characters, if that is what you wish.

Remember that with C++ you might need the char arrays to be one bigger to account for the null terminator

You'd need to use a function like strcpy

Is There any shorter Coding Than strcpy(customer.name,"Jeremy Smith");

strcpy(customer.cell,"123456789");

I can intialize everything at time of instance, For the short Program than I am writing ( Testing some theories in a short test program ) in which depending upon user input, I would change these entries from 1 set of data to another then maybe back to the first. All may not change, maybe just customer.cell ?

Is There any shorter Coding Than strcpy(customer.name,"Jeremy Smith");

strcpy(customer.cell,"123456789");

-.-

If you want it simpler than that then use a std::string.

Also, when dealing with C-style strings, at least use a safe strcpy function so you don't overflow.

I can intialize everything at time of instance, For the short Program than I am writing ( Testing some theories in a short test program ) in which depending upon user input, I would change these entries from 1 set of data to another then maybe back to the first. All may not change, maybe just customer.cell ?

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

If you don't want strcpy everywhere, just write a function for that.

void FillCustomer(char *pName, char *pCell, char *pCity)

{

    strncpy(customer.Name, pName, 25);

    strncpy(customer.City, pName, 12);

    strncpy(customer.Cell, pName, 20);

}

...

FillCustomer("Poigahn", "somewhere", "something");

And for text file io, you could use fputs and fgets.

FILE *f = fopen("MyFile.txt", "wt+");

if(f){

    fputs(customer.Name, f); fputs("\n", f);

    fputs(customer.City, f); fputs("\n", f);

    fputs(customer.Cell, f); fputs("\n", f);

    fclose(f);

}

then use fgets instead of fputs to retreive the data

FILE *f = fopen("MyFile.txt", "rt");

if(f){

    fgets(customer.Name, 25, f);

    fgets(customer.City, 12, f);

    fgets(customer.Cell, 20, f);

    fclose(f);

}

EDIT: just saw you wanted a binary format, it's even easier that way.

FILE *f = fopen("MyFile.txt", "wb+");

if(f){

    fwrite(&customer, 1, sizeof(customer), f);

    fclose(f);

}

...

FILE *f = fopen("MyFile.txt", "rb");

if(f){

    fread(&customer, 1, sizeof(customer), f);

    fclose(f);

}

As for the second question, i never really used or liked this trick in delphi, and i think it's pretty unique to the language. One way to do something similar would be by using pointers. Ex:

char *pName = &customer.Name[0];

fgets(pName, 25, f);

I would also suggest using constants instead of hard coding all those 25,12,20 numbers around. I did for the sake of simplicity.