Collecting many printf calls in a single string - c++

Question

I am dealing with some code that performs RC4 encryption algorithm with some params passed into the function. From there I am trying to append the generated hash to an empty string but have failed with a few of my attempts. I had seen the use of snprintf() but how could I go about converting the code below to save what gets printed to a string?
for (size_t i = 0, len = strlen(plaintext); i < len; i++) {
printf("|x%02hhx| ", hash[i]);
}

Answer 1

Why not use C++.
#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <cstring>
int main() {
char plaintext[] = "12345";
char hash[] = "123\xf0\x0f";
std::stringstream out;
for (size_t i = 0, len = strlen(plaintext); i < len; i++) {
out << "|x"
<< std::setfill('0') << std::setw(2) << std::setbase(16)
// ok, maybe this is the reason.
<< 0xff & hash[i]
<< "| ";
}
std::cout << out.str();
}

Answer 2

Just work with std::string::data after determining the size of the output of std::snprintf:
template<class...Args>
std::string PrintFToString(char const* format, Args...args)
{
std::string result;
char c;
int requiredSize = std::snprintf(&c, 1, format, args...);
if (requiredSize < 0)
{
throw std::runtime_error("error with snprintf");
}
result.resize(requiredSize);
int writtenSize = std::snprintf(result.data(), requiredSize+1, format, args...);
assert(writtenSize == requiredSize);
return result;
}
template<class...Args>
void AppendPrintFToString(std::string& target, char const* format, Args...args)
{
char c;
int requiredSize = std::snprintf(&c, 1, format, args...);
if (requiredSize < 0)
{
throw std::runtime_error("error with snprintf");
}
auto const oldSize = target.size();
target.resize(oldSize + requiredSize);
int writtenSize = std::snprintf(target.data() + oldSize, requiredSize+1, format, args...);
assert(writtenSize == requiredSize);
}
int main() {
std::cout << PrintFToString("|x%02hhx| ", 33) << '\n';
std::string output;
for (int i = 0; i != 64; ++i)
{
AppendPrintFToString(output, "|x%02hhx| ", i);
output.push_back('\n');
}
std::cout << output;
}
Note: If you know a reasonable upper bound for the number of characters of the output, you could use a char array allocated on the stack for output instead of having to use 2 calls to std::snprintf...