Comment by PaulDavisThe1st
9 hours ago
What they mean is this:
struct Foo {
int a;
float b;
std::string c;
};
Foo foo;
std::cout << foo;
with no extra code. It's called reflection, where the compiler can generate good-enough code to generate a character-stream serialization of an object without any human intervention.
I know what reflection is of course. C++ makes it easy to implement IO. If you're asking for a reflection-based solution with less effort, you are practically asking for zero extra code. Anyway, C++ does not yet have reflection but who's to say how anyone wants any particular data to be dumped? A default implementation is nice but less useful than you make it sound. In any case, there are libraries approximating what you described (usually with macros and stuff) and reflection is totally coming at some point.