Assignment of string to structure element

Question

My program crashes when I try to assign a string value to a member of a structure. My suspicion is that the member (of type string) within the structure was never properly alloc

Answer 1

The way you are allocating node is incorrect: if you want to dynamically allocate non-POD types in C++, you need to use new, since it will call the required constructors (followed by a call to delete when appropriate).

But it might be simpler to allocate an automatic instance:

DataRow node;

If you do need a pointer, make sure to have a look at smart pointers, particularly std::unique_ptr and std::shared_ptr. See also boost::scoped_ptr.