Question

Help with C++ console output formatting / spacing

Asked by: trailblazzyr55

I am familiar to programming but not so familiar with C++, at the moment I'm messing around with a console application and I'm looking to create a function that I can pass is a number of spaces and some output (numeric or string) and have the function apply the correct number of spaces to maintain a good format in outputing to the console, basically maintain column width....

so basically I'll have some output like so on the console window:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   My Program Name: TestingConsoleOutput.exe                                    |
|                                                                                                                |
|      Column 1   |   Column 2   |   Column 3   |   Column 4   |   Column 5   |
|                                                                                                                |
|      0                |   something |   854345      |   5489743   |   $2.25         |
|      1                |   some  |   8543      |   5443   |   $22.25         |
|      "                |   etc...   |   854345      |   59743   |   $2.25         |
|      20                |   something |   854345      |   5489743   |   $2.25         |
|      21                |   sometg |   8545      |   548973   |   $203.25         |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

As you can see standard output is losing the column formatting because of spaces, if I could assign (x) number of spaces to a single column say 10 spaces to the first column, then if I pass in something to output that's 4 characters long, it will say ok, provide one leading space, then whatever the four digits/chars are, then the remaining 5 spaces.

the issue is I'm not sure what to first pass into the function as the proper type since the output could be anything alpha-numeric, and I'm really not that familiar with C++ handling of something like this. How could I put together a function to accomplish this? This is just a simple procedural console app.

Thanks,
-tb55

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Asked On
2007-07-01 at 10:06:00ID22669359
Tags

console

,

output

Topic

C++ Programming Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: jkrPosted on 2007-07-01 at 10:15:50ID: 19399587

'cout' can handle that if you pass the appropriate I/O manipulators, e.g.

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
using namespace std;

//...

cout << setwidth(10) << setfill(' ') << num;

 

by: trailblazzyr55Posted on 2007-07-01 at 10:17:48ID: 19399594

just another thought... in coldfusion code this would be one way... however coldfusion isn't strictly typed, so it's pretty easy here....

function formatOutput(spaces, outputString){
 var remainingSpaces = arguments.spaces - (len(arguments.outputString) + 1);
 var i = 0;
 writeoutput(" ");                                     //leading space
 writeoutput(outputString);                     //stuff to output
 for(i = 1; i lte remainingSpaces; i=i+1){ //loop over remaining spaces, could also use repeatString() but this proves the concept better
  writeoutput(" ");                                    //write the remaining spaces to maintain column spacing...
 }
 writeoutput("\n");                                  //newline
}


so the result of formatOutput(10, "sometn") is    " _ sometn _ _ _ "

the "_" would be the spaces applied...

seeing how I could do it in C++

thanks!

 

by: trailblazzyr55Posted on 2007-07-01 at 10:18:50ID: 19399600

ahh great will look into it, thanks for the quick reply!  

 

by: waysidePosted on 2007-07-02 at 14:02:05ID: 19406898

For complicated formatting, I think good old printf is easier, although not type-safe:

printf("| %-10d | %-10s | %-10d | %-10d | $%-9.2f |", 0, "something", 854345, 5489743, 2.25);

 

by: NovaDenizenPosted on 2007-07-08 at 09:23:08ID: 19440471

Here's a more generic method.  It does a lot of string duplication, though.

template<T> string rpad(const T& x, unsigned fieldsize)
{
    ostringstream o;
    o << x;
    string res = o.str();
    if (res.size() < fieldsize) {
        res.append(fieldsize - res.size(), ' ');
    }
    return res;
}

 

by: trailblazzyr55Posted on 2007-07-20 at 06:14:21ID: 19530596

Sorry for the delayed response on here, the first answer solved what I was trying to do, thanks everyone for the feedback!

-tb55

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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