Understanding structures in CPP(c++)

Question

i am leaning CPP(c++) programming language, now i am learning structures in CPP. I found one complex(for me) structure, can anyone explains this structure.

struct person {
           string name;
           int salary;
           int empid;
} employee[] = { { "abc", 1, 2 }, { "klm", 3, 4 } }

What is this structure called (if there is any specific name. like array of structures)?
How can i access data members inside it?
How can i print the values(abc,klm......) directly(with "employee" if possible) and using struct variable?

C and C++ are two very different languages. Please don't tag unrelated languages. Also please take some time to refresh [the help pages](http://stackoverflow.com/help), take the SO [tour], read [ask], as well as [this question checklist](https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2012/11/24/stack-overflow-question-checklist/). Lastly please don't forget how to create a [mre], which replicates the problem you ask about and nothing more. — Some programmer dude, Dec 01 '21 at 07:03
If it did compile it'd be a combined structure and variable definition. `person` is the structure. `employee` is an array of `person` — Alan Birtles, Dec 01 '21 at 07:14
@churill Sorry, i didn't think that they are initializing the values. So randomly i typed values, but the definition has int values instead of strings, now i edited the question to exact values. — jayanth vutukuri, Dec 01 '21 at 07:23
@jayanthvutukuri Instead of radically editing your question to fix the problem that the answers point out, you could just accept one of the answers that also explains what you are wondering about. — Ted Lyngmo, Dec 01 '21 at 07:31
@jayanthvutukuri Ahh, ok :) Yes, we all started like this. If you had found this on the internet I would have recommended to choose another source of learning. We also have a list of [godd C++ books](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list) here in case you need one. — Lukas-T, Dec 01 '21 at 07:34

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 01 '21 at 07:15

In the example, the name of the structure type is person. The structure has 3 member variables, name, salary and empid of type string, int and int respectively.

Along with this type definition, a variable named employee is defined which is an array of type person. The size of the array is given by the size of initializer list (2 instances of person) provided after the =.

However, the initialization is not valid because it attempts to assign values of type string to all members for both instances of the structure. It would instead have to be in the form of example { {"abc", 1, 2}, {"def", 3, 4} }.

The array will now hold 2 persons, employee[0] and employee[1]. Their member variables can be accessed/printed as follows:

  printf("Employee 0: name=%s, salary=%d, empid=%d\n", employee[0].name, employee[0].salary, employee[0].empid);

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 01 '21 at 07:18

Modifying the initialization to something that actually builds, the code

struct person {
    string name;
    int salary;
    int empid;
} employee[] = { { "John Foo", 40000, 1 }, { "Claus Bar", 30000, 2 } };

Is equivalent to:

struct person {
    string name;
    int salary;
    int empid;
};

person employee[2] = { { "John Foo", 40000, 1 }, { "Claus Bar", 30000, 2 } };

That is, you define the structure person. Then you define and initialize the variable employee as an array of two person objects, each object initialized to certain values (employee[0] will be John Foo, and employee[1] will be Claus Bar).

Understanding structures in CPP(c++)

2 Answers2