Insert symbol into string C++ - c++

Question

I need to insert symbol '+' into string after its each five symbol.
st - the member of class String of type string
int i = 1;
int original_size = st.size;
int count = 0;
int j;
for (j = 0; j < st.size; j++)
{
if (i % 5)
count++;
}
while (st.size < original_size + count)
{
if (i % 5)
{
st.insert(i + 1, 1, '+');
st.size++;
}
i++;
}
return st;
I got an error in this part of code. I think it is connected with conditions of of the while-cycle. Can you help me please how to do this right?

Answer 1

If I've understood you correctly then you want to insert a '+' character every 5 chars in the original string. One way to do this would be to create a temporary string and then reassign the original string:
std::string st("A test string with some chars");
std::string temp;
for (int i = 1; i <= st.size(); ++i)
{
temp += st[i - 1];
if (i % 5 == 0)
{
temp += '+';
}
}
st = temp;
You'll notice I've started the loop at 1, this is to avoid the '+' being inserted on the first iteration (0%5==0).

Answer 2

#AlexB's answer shows how to generate a new string with the resulting text.
That said, if your problem is to perform in-place insertions your code should look similar to this:
std::string st{ "abcdefghijk" };
for(auto i = 4; i != st.size(); i += 5)
st.insert(i+1, 1, '+'); // insert 1 character = '+' at position i
assert(st == "abcde+fghij+k");

Answer 3

std::string InsertEveryNSymbols(const std::string & st, size_t n, char c)
{
const size_t size(st.size());
std::string result;
result.reserve(size + size / n);
for (size_t i(0); i != size; ++i)
{
result.push_back(st[i]);
if (i % n == n - 1)
result.push_back(c);
}
return result;
}
You don't need a loop to calculate the length of the resulting string. It's going to be simply size + size / 5. And doing multiple inserts makes it a quadratic-complexity algorithm when you can just as easily keep it linear.

Answer 4

Nothing no one else has done, but eliminates the string resizing and the modulus and takes advantage of a few new and fun language features.
std::string temp(st.length() + st.length()/5, '\0');
// preallocate string to eliminate need for resizing.
auto loc = temp.begin(); // iterator for temp string
size_t count = 0;
for (char ch: st) // iterate through source string
{
*loc++ = ch;
if (--count == 0) // decrement and test for zero much faster than
// modulus and test for zero
{
*loc++ = '+';
count = 5; // even with this assignment
}
}
st = temp;