How to make a variable name without creating an array in C++? - c++

How do you make a variable name where you create a variable and then in brackets the variable number? (By the way, I'm just guessing out how the code should be so that you get what I'm trying to say.) For example:
int var[5];
//create a variable var[5], but not var[4], var[3], var[2], etc.
Then, the variable number must be able to be accessed by a variable value:
int number = 5;
int var[number]; //creates a var[5], not a var[4], etc.
int var[2]; //creates a var[2], not a var[1], etc.
cout >>var[number];
number = 2;
cin << var[number];
If I'm way off track with my "example", please suggest something else. I need something similar to this for my game to operate, because I must be able to create an unlimited instance of bullets, but they will also be destroyed at one point.

It looks like you are looking for the functionality provided by std::map which is a container used to map keys to values.
Documentation of std::map
Example use
In the below example we bind the value 123 to the integer key 4, and the value 321 to key 8. We then use a std::map<int,int>::const_iterator to iterate over the key/value pairs in our std::map named m.
#include <map>
...
std::map<int, int> m;
m[4] = 123;
m[8] = 321;
for (std::map<int, int>::const_iterator cit = m.begin (); cit != m.end (); ++cit)
std::cout << cit->first << " -> " << cit->second << std::endl;
output:
4 -> 123
8 -> 321

It looks like you want variable length arrays, which is not something C++ supports. In most cases, the correct solution is to use an std::vector instead, as in
int number = 42; // or whatever
std::vector<int> var(number);
You can use std::vector as you would use an array in most cases, and you gain a lot of bonus functionality.

If I understand what you want correctly (which I'm not certain that I do), you want to be able to create a place to hold objects and use them according to some index number, but to only create the specific objects which go in it on demand. You want do to this either because 1) you don't know how many objects you're going to create or 2) you aren't going to use every index number or 3) both.
If (1) then you should probably just use a vector, which is an array-like structure which grows automatically as you add more things to it. Look up std::vector.
If (2) then you could use an array of pointers and initially set all of the values to null and then use new to create the objects as needed. (Or you could use the solution recommend in part 3.)
If (3) then you want to use some form of map or hash table. These structures will let you find things by number even when not all numbers are in use and will grow as needed. I would highly recommend a hash table, but in C++, there isn't one in the STL, so you have to build your own or find one in a third-party library. For ease, you can use std::map, which is part of the STL. It does basically the same thing, but is slower. Some C++ distributions also include std::hash_map. If it's available, that should be used instead because it will be faster than std::map.

Related

How to remove duplicates of type vector<string> in C++?

I know that a good way to prevent duplicates is to use an unordered_set. However, this method does not seem to work when I want to have an unordered_set<vector<string>>. How can I go about doing this? For example, I want to prevent <"a", "b", "c"> from being duplicated in my unordered_set<vector<string>>.
Can this unordered_set<vector<string>> be used outside the defined class as well?
Code:
unordered_set<vector<string>> abc({"apple", "ball", "carrot"});
abc.insert({"apple", "ball", "carrot"});
cout << abc.size() << endl; //abc.size() should be 1
There is a number of ways to get rid of duplicates, building a set out of your objects is one of them. Whether it is going to be std::set or std::unordered_set is up to you to decide, and the decision usually depends on how good of a hash fuction can you come up with.
This in turn requires the knowledge of the domain, e.g. what your vectors of strings represent and what values can they have. if you do come up with a good hash, you can implement it like this:
struct MyHash
{
std::size_t operator()(std::vector<std::string> const& v) const
{
// your hash code here
return 0; // return your hash value instead of 0
}
};
Then you just declare your unordered_set with that hash:
std::unordered_set<std::vector<std::string>, MyHash> abc;
I would say it's a safe bet to just go with a std::set at first though, unless you have a good hash function on your mind.

Hashing Function/Code

so I'm just learning (or trying to) a bit about hashing. I'm attempting to make a hashing function, however I'm confused where I save the data to. I'm trying to calculate the number of collisions and print that out. I have made 3 different files, one with 10,000 words, 20,000 words and 30,000 words. Each word is just 10 random numbers/letters.
long hash(char* s]){
long h;
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++){
h = h + (int)s[i];
}
//A lot of examples then mod h by the table size
//I'm a bit confused what this table is... Is it an array of
//10,000 (or however many words)?
//h % TABLE_SIZE
return h
}
int main (int argc, char* argv[]){
fstream input(argv[1]);
char* nextWord;
while(!input.eof()){
input >> nextWord;
hash(nextWord);
}
}
So that's what I currently have, but I can't figure out what the table is exactly, as I said in the comments above... Is it a predefined array in my main with the number of words in it? For example, if I have a file of 10 words, do I make an array a of size 10 in my main? Then if/when I return h, lets say the order goes: 3, 7, 2, 3
The 4th word is a collision, correct? When that happens, I add 1 to collision and then add 1 to then check if slot 4 is also full?
Thanks for the help!
The point of hashing is to have a constant time access to every element you store. I'll try to explain on simple example bellow.
First, you need to know how much data you'd have to store. If for example you want to store numbers and you know, that you won't store numbers greater than 10. Simpliest solution is to create an array with 10 elements. That array is your "table", where you store your numbers. So how do I achieve that amazing constant time access? Hashing function! It's point is to return you an index to your array. Let's create a simple one: If you'd like to store 7, you just save it to array on position 7. Every time, you'd like to look, for element 7, you just pass it to your hasning funcion and bzaah! You got an position to your element in constant time! But what if you'd like to store more elements with value 7? Your simple hashing function is returning 7 for every element and now its position i already occupied! How to solve that? Well, there is not many solution, the simpliest are:
1: Chaining - you simply save element on first free position. This has significant draw back. Imagine, you want to delete some element ... (this is the method, you describing in question)
2: Linked list - if you create an array of pointers on some linked lists, you can easilly add your new element at the end of linked list, that is on position 7!
Both of this simple solutions has its drawbacks and cons. I guess you can see them. As #rwols has said, you don't have to use array. You can also use a tree or be a real C++ master and use unordered_map and unordered_set with custom hash function, which is quite cool. Also there is structure named trie, which is usefull, when you'd like to create some sort of dictionary (where is really hard to know, how many words you will need to store)
To sum it up. You has to know, how many things, you wan't to store and then, create ideal hashing function, that covers up array of apropriate size and in perfect world, it has to have uniform index distribution, with no colisions. (Achiving this is pretty hard and in the real world, I guess, this is impossible, so the less colisions, the better.)
Your hash function, is pretty bad. It will have lot of colisions (like strings "ab" and "ba") and also, you need to mod m it with m being the size of you array (aka. table), so you can save it to some array and you can profit of it. The modus is a way of simplyfiing the has function, because has function has to "fit" in table, that you specified in beginning, because you can't save element on position 11, 12, ... if you have array of 10.
How should good hashing function look like? Well, there is better sources than me. Some example (Alert! It's in Java)
To your example: You simply can't save 10k or even more words into table of size 10. That'll create a lot of collisions and you loose the main benefit of hashing function - constant access to elements you saved.
And how would your code look? Something like this:
int main (int argc, char* argv[]){
fstream input(argv[1]);
char* nextWord;
TypeOfElement table[size_of_table];
while(!input.eof()){
input >> nextWord;
table[hash(nextWord)] = // desired element which you want to save
}
}
But I guess, your goal isn't to save something somewhere, but to count number of colisions. Also note that code above doesn't solve colisions. If you'd like to count colisions, create array table of ints and initialize it to zero. Than, just increment the value, which is stored on index, which is returned by your hash funcion, like this:
table[hash(nextWord)]++;
I hope I helped. Please specify, what else you want to know.
If a hash table is required then as others have stated std::unordered_map will work in most cases. Now if you need something more powerful because of a large entry base, then I would suggest looking into tries. Tries combine the concepts of (Vector-Array) insertion, (Hashing) & Linked Lists. The run time is close to O(M) where M is the amount of characters in a string if you are hashing a string. It helps to remove the chance of collisions. And the more you add to a trie structure the less work has to be done as certain nodes are opened and created. The one draw back is that tries require more memory. Here is a diagram
Now your trie may vary on the size of the array due to what you are storing, but the overall concept and construction of one is the same. If you was doing a word - definition look up then you may want an array of 26 or a few more for each possible hashing character.
To count a number of words which have same hash, we should know hashes of all previous words. When you count a hash of some word, you should write it down, for example in some array. So you need an array with size equal to the number of words.
Then you should compare the new hash with all previous ones. Method of counting depends on what you need - number of pair of collisions or number off same elements.
Hash function should not be responsible for storing data. Normally you would have a container that uses hash function internally.
From what you wrote I understood that you want to create hashtable. One way you could do that (probably not the most efficient one, but should give you an idea):
#include <fstream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <map>
#include <memory>
using namespace std;
namespace example {
long hash(char* s){
long h;
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++){
h = h + (int)s[i];
}
return h;
}
}
int main (int argc, char* argv[]){
fstream input(argv[1]);
char* nextWord;
std::map<long, std::unique_ptr<std::vector<std::string>>> hashtable;
while(!input.eof()){
input >> nextWord;
long newHash = example::hash(nextWord);
auto it = hashtable.find(newHash);
// Collision detected?
if (it == hashtable.end()) {
hashtable.insert(std::make_pair(newHash, std::unique_ptr<std::vector<std::string>>(new std::vector<std::string> { nextWord } )));
}
else {
it->second->push_back(nextWord);
}
}
}
I used some C++ 11 features to write an example faster.
I am not sure that I understand what you do not understand. The explanations below might help you.
A hash table is a kind of associative array. It is used to map keys to values in a similar manner an array is used to map indexes (keys) to values. For instance, an array of three numbers, { 11, -22, 33 }, associates index 0 to 11, index 1 to -22 and index 2 to 33.
Now, let us assume that we would like to associate 1 to 11, 2 to -22 and 3 to 33. The solution is simple: we keep the same array, only we transform the key by subtracting one from it, thus obtaining the original index
This is fine until we realize that this is just a particular case. What if the keys are not so “predictable”? A solution would be to put the associations in a list of {key, value} pairs and when someone is asking for a key, just search the list: { 123, 11}, {3, -22}, {0, 33} If the value associated to 3 is asked, we simply search the keys in list for a match and find -22. That’s fine, but if the list is large we’re in trouble. We could speed the search if we sort the array by keys and use binary search, but still the search may take some time if the list is large.
The search speed may be further enhanced if we break the list in sub-lists (or buckets) made of related pairs. This is what a hash function does: puts together pairs by related keys (an ideal hash function would associate one key to one value).
A hash table is a two columns table (an array):
The first column is the hash key (the index computed by a hash function). The size of the hash table is given by the maximum value of the hash function. If, for instance, the last step in computing the hash function is modulo 10, the size of the table will be 10; the pairs list will be broken into 10 sub-lists.
The second column is a list (bucket) of key/values pairs (the sub-list I was taking about).

C++, How to use maps for holding multiple integer values

I'm working on a word Tagging system for a C++ project. I need a system where a map stores the following key-value information:
word["with"] = 16, 6, 15;
Where ["with"] is the index, and the 3-tuple (16, 6, 15) are values of the index. I've tried maps, but I keep getting semantic errors, which I understand are a result of not being able to give a key more then 1 value.
I tried multi maps, but I can't seem to get the syntax to suit my needs?
I would like to refrain from using Structs or Classes, as this database already contains 200 words, and I'm trying to keep my lines of code readable and too a minimum.
How would I go about this? Am I missing something? How would you declare a system like this?
You should declare your map as std::map<std::string, std::vector<unsigned int>>, so you can have a vector of values for your index.
You can make a map that maps Strings to Vectors or some other data structure that can hold an arbitrary number of integers.
Worth noting, however, that things like Structs and Classes are components of a language meant to organize code. Structs group related data; classes model groups of related data and their associated behaviors. It's certainly possible to do everything without them but that would make for some very unreadable code.
The number of lines and whether or not you use classes/structs are poor metrics for the complexity and readability of your code. And the modularity they offer far exceeds the minute runtime cost of dereferencing those values.
word["with"] = 16, 6, 15;//This usage is wrong
std::multimap or std::unordered_multimap should work for you.
If you define word as follows:
std::multimap<std::string,int> word;
You should insert values to map as shown below:
std::string key="with";
word.insert(std::pair<std::string,int>(key,16));
word.insert(std::pair<std::string,int>(key,6));
word.insert(std::pair<std::string,int>(key,15));
for( auto &x : word)
std::cout<<x.first<<" " << x.second<<"\n";
As user4581301 pointed out in comment if you have C++11 enabled compiler, you can insert values into std::multimap as follows:
word.emplace("with",16);
word.emplace("with",6);
word.emplace("with",15);
Demo: http://coliru.stacked-crooked.com/a/c7ede5c497172c5d
Example for using C++ maps to hold multiple integer values:
#include<iostream>
#include<map>
#include<vector>
using namespace std;
int main(){
std::map<int, std::vector<int> > mymap2;
std::vector<int> myvector;
myvector.push_back(8);
myvector.push_back(11);
myvector.push_back(53);
mymap2[5] = myvector;
cout << mymap2[5][0] << endl;
cout << mymap2[5][1] << endl;
cout << mymap2[5][2] << endl;
}
Prints:
8
11
53
Just replace the int datatypes with a string and you should be able to map strings to lists of numbers.

Order like a list but access by a key?

I used list to place cities into a trip. Then I iterate over
the list to display the trip itinerary. I would like to access
the cities by the name rather than by the trip order. So, I
thought I could use a map rather than a list but the key determines
the order. I would still like to control the order of the sequence
but be able to access the entries by a key.
Can these features be combined? Is there some standard way to address
this?
#include <list>
#include <iostream>
struct City{
City(std::string a_n, int a_d):name(a_n), duration(a_d){}
std::string name;
int duration;
};
int main(){
std::list<City*> trip;
trip.push_back(new City("NY", 5));
trip.push_back(new City("LA", 2));
for (std::list<City*>::iterator ii=trip.begin(); ii!=trip.end(); ++ii)
std::cout << (*ii)->name << " for " << (*ii)->duration << " days." <<std::endl;
}
Often times you will need to compose multiple lists and maps. The common way is to store a pointer to the Cities in your by city lookup map from the pointers in your list. Or you can use a class like Boost.MultiIndex to do what you want in what I would say is much cleaner. It also scales much better and there is a lot less boiler plate code if you want to add new indexes. It is also usually more space and time efficient
typedef multi_index_container<
City,
indexed_by<
sequenced<>, //gives you a list like interface
ordered_unique<City, std::string, &City::name> //gives you a lookup by name like map
>
> city_set;
Create a map<string,int> m;, where the values are indexes to a vector<City>, for example m["NY"] == 0 and m["LA"] == 1.
Use two collections:
A list to store the actual objects in the order you are interested in.
A map to map names to the objects.
The best solution is to use Boost.MultiIndex, though that's slightly more involved. Unfortunately, I don't have time now to provide sample code; sorry.

Check if array index exists

Is there any way to check if a given index of an array exists?
I am trying to set numerical index but something like 1, 5, 6,10. And so I want to see if these indexes already exist and if they do just increase another counter.
I normally work with php but I am trying to do this in c++, so basically I am trying to ask if there is an isset() way to use with c++
PS: Would this be easier with vectors? If so, can anyone point me to a good vector tutorial? Thanks
In C++, the size of an array is fixed when it is declared, and while you can access off the end of the declared array size, this is very dangerous and the source of hard-to-track-down bugs:
int i[10];
i[10] = 2; // Legal but very dangerous! Writing on memory you don't know about
It seems that you want array-like behavior, but without all elements being filled. Traditionally, this is in the realms of hash-tables. Vectors are not such a good solution here as you will have empty elements taking up space, much better is something like a map, where you can test if an element exists by searching for it and interpreting the result:
#include <map>
#include <string>
// Declare the map - integer keys, string values
std::map<int, std::string> a;
// Add an item at an arbitrary location
a[2] = std::string("A string");
// Find a key that isn't present
if(a.find(1) == a.end())
{
// This code will be run in this example
std::cout << "Not found" << std::endl;
}
else
{
std::cout << "Found" << std::endl;
}
One word of warning: Use the above method to find if a key exists, rather than something like testing for a default value
if(a[2] == 0)
{
a[2] = myValueToPutIn;
}
as the behavior of a map is to insert a default constructed object on the first access of that key value, if nothing is currently present.
My personal vote is for using a vector. They will resize dynamically, and as long as you don't do something stupid (like try and access an element that doesn't exist) they are quite friendly to use.
As for tutorials the best thing I could point you towards is a google search
To do this without vectors, you can simply cross-check the index you are tying to access with the size of array. Like: if(index < array_size) it is invalid index.
In case the size is not known to you, you can find it using the sizeof operator.
For example:
int arr[] = {5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3};
int arr_size = sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]);
It sounds to me as though really a map is closest to what you want. You can use the Map class in the STL (standard template library)(http://www.cppreference.com/wiki/stl/map/start).
Maps provide a container for objects which can be referenced by a key (your "index").