Objects without classes - data model in 'clean C'

I worked with C ++ in some midsized project, but I never made any serious C programs.

After reading this article, I began to wonder how I can use C ++ 11 without classes and exceptions. I once heard that the term clean C. Clean C should be C ++ - code that does not use C ++ functions that ANSI C does not have, such as classes or metaprogramming.

There are many resources on how to do things efficiently in C and how to do them in C ++. But it is surprisingly hard to find any resources on how to take the best of both worlds.

My question has two parts:

• Are there any good resources to use C ++ without namespaces, exceptions, and metaprogramming? Books, open source projects?
• Read this simple code snippet, which is my first attempt at processing data structures and char strings in a specified C ++ 11 subset. The first thing that comes to my mind is code redundancy. What do you do differently and why?

-

#include <cstring>

namespace addressbook {
namespace contact {

struct contact {
    char* name;
    char* email;
};

void initialize(addressbook::contact::contact* contact)
{
    contact->name = nullptr;
    contact->email = nullptr;
}

void deinitialize(addressbook::contact::contact* contact)
{
    delete[] contact->name;
    delete[] contact->email;
}

void set_name(addressbook::contact::contact* contact, char* name)
{
    delete[] contact->name;
    contact->name = new char [strlen(name) + 1];
    std::strcpy(contact->name, name);
}

void set_email(addressbook::contact::contact* contact, char* email)
{
    delete[] contact->email;
    contact->email = new char [strlen(email) + 1];
    std::strcpy(contact->email, email);
}

} // namespace contact
} // namespace addressbook

int main()
{
    namespace c = addressbook::contact;

    c::contact jimmy;

    c::initialize(&jimmy);

    c::set_name(&jimmy, const_cast<char*>("Jimmy Page"));
    c::set_email(&jimmy, const_cast<char*>("jp@example.com"));

    c::deinitialize(&jimmy);

    return 0;
}

Please have mercy on me - I am new to programming.

Why not just C then?

Namespaces, new / deleted, standard library algorithms, accelerating libraries, cool features of C ++ 11 - to name a few.

Why new / delete when you don't have constructors / destructors?

Due to the type of security. mallocreturns*void

But the standard library throws exceptions! And boost too!

The fact that I do not use exceptions does not mean that I cannot handle exceptions from external libraries. It just means that I want to solve problems differently in my part of the system.