‘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.

Answer 1

The problem is that the code you have that does the printing is outside of any function. Statements 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

Including:

int main()
{ //code 
  return 0;
}

will help you. This problem usually occurs to those who are learning from book in which they usually don't use main function after a few chapters.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

If you want to use cout outside the function you can do it by collecting the value returned by cout in boolean.see the below example

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;

bool b=cout<<"1";

int main()
{

return 0;

}

output:

error prog.cpp:4:14: error: cannot convert 'std::basic_ostream<char>' to 'bool' in initialization
 bool b=cout<<"1";

Answer 5

main() function is missed.There should be a main() function in C++ ,and you should put cout into a function.