Re: Accessing elements of static array by name

On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:03:36 +0000, Erik Wikstr??m wrote:


I have, for example, a number of "Server-Objects" which are registered
when connecting to the server and can be used afterwards. When registering
or when generating statistics, it is convenient to loop over an array,
later I want to access them by name.

What I do right now is define global objects and then construct an array
of pointers:

static A element_a = { "a" };
static A element_b = { "b" };
static A element_c = { "c" };

static A *array[] = {
        &element_a,
        &element_b,
        &element_c,
        // ...
        NULL // sentinel
};

Another possibility is to do it the other way round, like Gianni suggested:
have an array of objects and initialise references with a find()-function
at program-initialisation time.

I was hoping for a more convenient way.

BTW: I think accessing array-elements by name would sometimes be
convenient for local arrays too:

int func()
{
    int array[] = {1, element2: 2, 3 };
    return element2; // Alias for array[1]
}