‘cout’ does not name a type

Question

I was learning Adam Drozdek's book "Data Structures and Algorithms in C++", well, I typed the code in page 15 in my vim and compiled it in terminal of my Ubuntu 11.10.

#include <iostream> #include <cstring> using namespace std;  struct Node{     char *name;     int age;     Node(char *n = "", int a = 0){         name = new char[strlen(n) + 1];         strcpy(name, n);         age = a;     } };  Node node1("Roger", 20), node2(node1); cout << node1.name << ' ' << node1.age << ' ' << node2.name << ' ' << node2.age; strcpy(node2.name, "Wendy"); node2.name = 30; cout << node1.name << ' ' << node1.age << ' ' << node2.name << ' ' << node2.age; 

But there's some error:

oo@oo:~$ g++ unproper.cpp -o unproper unproper.cpp:15:23: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’ [-Wwrite-strings] unproper.cpp:16:1: error: ‘cout’ does not name a type unproper.cpp:17:7: error: expected constructor, destructor, or type conversion before ‘(’ token unproper.cpp:18:1: error: ‘node2’ does not name a type unproper.cpp:19:1: error: ‘cout’ does not name a type 

I have searched this,this,this and this, but I can't find the answer.

Any help would be appreciated:)

Answer 1

The problem is that the code you have that does the printing is outside of any function. Statements that aren't declarations in C++ need to be inside a function. For example:

#include <iostream> #include <cstring> using namespace std;      struct Node{     char *name;     int age;     Node(char *n = "", int a = 0){         name = new char[strlen(n) + 1];         strcpy(name, n);         age = a;     } };   int main() {     Node node1("Roger", 20), node2(node1);     cout << node1.name << ' ' << node1.age << ' ' << node2.name << ' ' << node2.age;     strcpy(node2.name, "Wendy");     node2.name = 30;     cout << node1.name << ' ' << node1.age << ' ' << node2.name << ' ' << node2.age; } 

Answer 2

You are missing the function declaration around your program code. The following should solve your error:

#include <iostream> #include <cstring> using namespace std;  struct Node{     char *name;     int age;     Node(char *n = "", int a = 0){         name = new char[strlen(n) + 1];         strcpy(name, n);         age = a;     } };  int main() {     Node node1("Roger", 20), node2(node1);     cout << node1.name << ' ' << node1.age << ' ' << node2.name << ' ' << node2.age;     strcpy(node2.name, "Wendy");     node2.name = 30;     cout << node1.name << ' ' << node1.age << ' ' << node2.name << ' ' << node2.age; } 

The error you then get (something like "invalid conversion from int to char*") is because you try to set an integer value (30) to a string attribute (name) with

node2.name=30; 

I think

node2.age=30; 

would be correct.