date struct, type issue

[plush blade]

    int month;
    int day;
    int year; 
};


class Session
{

public:


    // file pointer scoped to session class (property of class)

    //OPENS AND WRITES TO CSV FILE (USING USER INPUT) https://linuxhint.com/cpp-write-csv-file/
    fstream file;     // declare fout variable using fstream,which is the datatype that denotes the file stream and allows us to perform read,write, update operations on files

    void openFile()
    {


        // EACH TIME A NEW CSV FILE IS CREATED ASSOCIATED WITH THE USER OBJECT
        // open() opens the csv file - automatically opens at the start of each session
        file.open("Transfers.csv", ios::out); //iosout - used to open the file for writing purposes
        file << "Date" << "," << "Description" << ","  "Income" << "," << "Expense" << "," << "Net balance" << "\n"; // csv column headers

        //file << "Expense" << "," << "Income" << "," << "Balance" << "\n"; // csv column headers


    }; 



    void createTransfer()  // void - returns nothing, no return statement. all functions require a return type 
    {

        void openFile(); // call function that opens file 


        Date mydate; // create an instance of the struct

        int date; 
        double income, expense, running_balance;
        string description;


        cout << "Enter in the following details in order to create the transfer." << endl;

        cout << "Day (integer only) : " << endl; 
        cin >> mydate.day; 
        // only enter between 0 -31
        cout << "month (integer only) : " << endl;
        cin >> mydate.month;
        // make it so they can only enter between 0 - 12
        cout << "Year (integer only) : " << endl;
        cin >> mydate.year;
        // make it so they can only enter until 2023 

        // format the information properly 
        date = mydate.day << "/" << mydate.month << "/" << mydate.year; ```

[fresh verge]

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[plush blade]

@deep harness

I understand that I have them all listed as ints in the struct

and I understand the line which has the issue

[deep harness]

I see. So you're just wondering how to concatenate all that information and represent as a string, correct?

[plush blade]

These are the errors btw if u didn't see them earlier :

[plush blade]

I can't use the '+' operator I know that

I'm assuming type conversion?

[deep harness]

Not necessarily. It depends on the design mostly

[plush blade]

Kk I just want to know the simplest way so I can just do it for that one line

Does it necessarily have to be a string?

can I make it all an int?

[deep harness]

It doesn't

[deep harness]

An int stores a number. From what I understand from that piece of code, you want to store a preformatted date

Which would be a string (no matter if we mean a C-string, std::string, or something else. Just a sequence of characters)

There are many ways to solve the problem. I'll list two

[plush blade]

i declared the 'date' variable as an int though should I take that out?

[deep harness]

The first solution would be to use statically allocated arrays of characters. For example, if you know all your dates will take at most 10 characters (2 for the day, 2 for the month and 4 for the year + slashes between them), you could allocate an array of 11 characters (because the null character – '\0 – must be included at the end). Then you could do something like itoa (https://cplusplus.com/reference/cstdlib/itoa/) that encodes a number

int n = 33;
char my_number[5];
char* end = itoa(n, my_number, 10);
assert(end - my_number == 2);

Then you could use it to encode the day, month and year one by one, and manually add /s between the numbers. However, aside from it being a C-like solution, it has also other disadvantages. First of all, you can't return a C-array from a function. You need to wrap it in a struct. Second, if you decided to somehow change the format of the thing you store, chances are you might need to significantly change your logic.

Another solution is to use std::string. In that case, it simplifies a lot to something like

std::to_string(mydate.day) + "/" + std::to_string(mydate.month) + "/" + std::to_string(mydate.year);

[plush blade]

I'll use the second thanks

[deep harness]

No worries

But keep in mind the result needs to be stored as std::string, not as an int

[plush blade]

wait so I set all that equal to date and I set the date variable now equal to a string so it's no longer an int

[deep harness]

Oh, one more thing that may be useful for you. If you decided to start the string with an /, then you would need to turn it into a string:

// Wrong!
"/" + std::to_string(mydate.date) + /* ... */

// Correct
std::string("/") + std::to_string(mydate.date) + /* ... */

// Also correct
using std::literals::string_literals::operator""s;
"/"s + std::to_string(mydate.date) + /* ... */

[deep harness]

Could you elaborate?

The type on the left-hand side needs to be an std::string too

std::string result = std::to_string(mydate.day) + "/" + std::to_string(mydate.month) + "/" + std::to_string(mydate.year);

[fresh verge]

@plush blade Has your question been resolved? If so, run !solved :)

[plush blade]

!solved