Is it possible to have a dynamically populating Array of char* in C++

Question

I have a situation like this.

declare array of char*;
switch(id)
{
case 1:
    add 4 words in array
case 2:
    add 2 words in array
default:
    add 1 word in array
}

use array here;

Is it possible to do such thing in C++. I tried doing that but it is not working for me.

Answer 1

Yes. For clean, easy-to-understand, correct, exception-safe code, use vector and string:

std::vector<std::string> v;

switch (id)
{
case 1:
    v.push_back("a");
    v.push_back("b");
    v.push_back("c");
    v.push_back("d");
    break;

case 2:
    v.push_back("a");
    v.push_back("b");
    break;

default:
    v.push_back("a");
}

// Use the strings in v; for example, using a C++11 lambda expression:
std::for_each(begin(v), end(v), [](std::string const& s)
{
    std::cout << s << std::endl;
});

// Or using a for loop:
for (std::vector<std::string>::const_iterator it(v.begin()); it != v.end(); ++it)
{
    std::cout << *it << std::endl;
}

Of course, you can accomplish similar results using manual dynamic allocation and cleanup of both the array and the C strings, but to do so and to ensure that the code is correct and exception-safe is more difficult and would require substantially more code.