C++: How do I assign an object within an array based on user input?

Question

Here I have an array of Agents, and I want to initialize an array of Players. An agent has just his name. The user must input the player name, jersey number, and player's agent. In this case, I wanted multiple players to be able to have the same agent, so I used a pointer.

// Default constructor = Agent(std::string = "")
Agent agents[2] = {"Larry", "Joe"};

// Default constructor = Player(std::string = "", int = 0, Agent* = 0)
Player players[3];
initializePlayers(players, 3);

void initializePlayers(Player players[], int playerSize)
{
    string playerName, agentName;
    int playerNum;
    Agent *myAgent;

    for(int i = 0; i < playerSize; i++)
    {
        cout << "Please enter the player's name: ";
        getline(cin, playerName);

        cout << "Please enter the player's number: ";
        cin >> playerNum;

        cout << "Please enter the player's agent: ";
        getline(cin, agentName);
        cin.ignore(1000, '\n');

        // If the agent's name matches one of the names in agents array
        // assign that agent to this player

        Player tempPlayer(playerName, playerNum, myAgent);
        players[i] = tempPlayer;
    }
}

Inside my comments, I need to assign myAgent. For example, if the user enters "Larry" for the first player, Larry should be his agent. If the user enters "Joe" for the next two players, they should both have Joe as their agents. How do I accomplish this? Even an idea to get me started would help. Thank you.

Use a loop to search for the right agent. Once found, assign it. End of story. — Sam Varshavchik, Oct 31 '16 at 23:20
It's not related to your question, but see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10553597/cin-and-getline-skipping-input. Otherwise you'll get the wrong value of `agentName`. — Barmar, Oct 31 '16 at 23:42

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '16 at 23:31

First you should better use a std::array like that:

// Default constructor = Agent(std::string = "")
std::array<Agent, 2> agents = { Agent("Larry"), Agent("Joe") };

Then you can search for the agent like this:

myAgent = nullptr;
for (unsigned i = 0; i < agents.size(); ++i)
{
    if (agentName == agents.getName())
      myAgent = &agents[i];
}

C++: How do I assign an object within an array based on user input?

1 Answers1