Consider a hierarchical structure like this

directory
    [
         [item_0;item_1;...;item_n]
         [item_0;item_1;inner_directory[...];item_m]
         other_directory
             [...]
    ]

A directory contains

• An array of strings (delimited by ‘;’ in input data)
• A map from name to sub-directories (the name of the directory is followed by ‘[‘)
• An array of unnamed sub-directories

The directory can be described by this class:

class Directory
    {
    public:
        //Appropriate operations
    private:
        std::vector<std::string> items;
        std::map<std::string, Directory> named_dirs;
        std::vector<Directory> unnamed_dirs;
    };

However:

• The Directory class requires three sets of operations, resulting in a large class definition
• A copy operation will be recursive

Can the data be stored in a better way avoiding at least the first point?