"Dynamic" Object Structures?

From: Randy Yates (yates_at_ieee.org)
Date: 12/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 10:57:11 GMT

Having done a bit of Access Basic programming, I'm realizing
that AB does seem to have (as much as I hate to admit it since
I think it's a toy language) an advantage over C++.

Let's say I have a table called "tblCars" that has the fields fYear
(integer), fModel (string), fMake (string). When I perform a query in
AB, I do something like:

  Dim rstCars As Recordset
  Dim year As Integer

  set rstCars = dbCurrent.OpenRecordset("SELECT * FROM tblCars")

Now here's the rub: I can then access the fields of the recordset
as

  year = rstCars!fYear

AB has syntax that allows me to make such a construction at compile-time
that will yield a dynamic result at run-time.

So my basic question is, is there any mechanism in C++ to do a similar
thing?

The closest I can come is to define a recordset object that has a member
function

  void * Fields(char* fName);

so that I can say

  int year;
  recordset rstCars("SELECT * FROM tblCars");

  year = rstCars.Fields("fYear");

Is this a reasonable way to do this? Is there any mechanism in C++ to
do it more elegantly? 

-- 
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