I am trying to concatenate an integer to a known string, and I have found that there are several ways to do it, two of those being:
int num=13;
string str = "Text" + static_cast<ostringstream*>( &(ostringstream() << num) )->str();
or I could also use boost libraries' lexical_cast:
int num=13;
string str= "Text" + boost::lexical_cast<std::string>(num);
Is the use of boost::lexical_cast more efficient in any way, since I already know the conversion type (int to string)? Or is static_cast just as effective, without having to rely on external libraries?
string str = "Text" + static_cast<ostringstream*>( &(ostringstream() << num) )->str();
This is ugly and not easily readable. Adding to this the fact that lexical_cast does almost exactly this underneath we can definitely say that using lexical_cast is "better".
In C++11, however, we have to_string overloads.
string str = "Text" + to_string(num);
Which is the best option provided your compiler supports it.
See also How to convert a number to string and vice versa in C++
Related
tl:dr
How can I concatenate const char* with std::string, neatly and
elegantly, without multiple function calls. Ideally in one function
call and have the output be a const char*. Is this impossible, what
is an optimum solution?
Initial Problem
The biggest barrier I have experienced with C++ so far is how it handles strings. In my opinion, of all the widely used languages, it handles strings the most poorly. I've seen other questions similar to this that either have an answer saying "use std::string" or simply point out that one of the options is going to be best for your situation.
However this is useless advice when trying to use strings dynamically like how they are used in other languages. I cannot guaranty to always be able to use std::string and for the times when I have to use const char* I hit the obvious wall of "it's constant, you can't concatenate it".
Every solution to any string manipulation problem I've seen in C++ requires repetitive multiple lines of code that only work well for that format of string.
I want to be able to concatenate any set of characters with the + symbol or make use of a simple format() function just how I can in C# or Python. Why is there no easy option?
Current Situation
Standard Output
I'm writing a DLL and so far I've been output text to cout via the << operator. Everything has been going fine so far using simple char arrays in the form:
cout << "Hello world!"
Runtime Strings
Now it comes to the point where I want to construct a string at runtime and store it with a class, this class will hold a string that reports on some errors so that they can be picked up by other classes and maybe sent to cout later, the string will be set by the function SetReport(const char* report). So I really don't want to use more than one line for this so I go ahead and write something like:
SetReport("Failure in " + __FUNCTION__ + ": foobar was " + foobar + "\n"); // __FUNCTION__ gets the name of the current function, foobar is some variable
Immediately of course I get:
expression must have integral or unscoped enum type and...
'+': cannot add two pointers
Ugly Strings
Right. So I'm trying to add two or more const char*s together and this just isn't an option. So I find that the main suggestion here is to use std::string, sort of weird that typing "Hello world!" doesn't just give you one of those in the first place but let's give it a go:
SetReport(std::string("Failure in ") + std::string(__FUNCTION__) + std::string(": foobar was ") + std::to_string(foobar) + std::string("\n"));
Brilliant! It works! But look how ugly that is!! That's some of the ugliest code I've every seen. We can simplify to this:
SetReport(std::string("Failure in ") + __FUNCTION__ + ": foobar was " + std::to_string(foobar) + "\n");
Still possibly the worst way I've every encounter of getting to a simple one line string concatenation but everything should be fine now right?
Convert Back To Constant
Well no, if you're working on a DLL, something that I tend to do a lot because I like to unit test so I need my C++ code to be imported by the unit test library, you will find that when you try to set that report string to a member variable of a class as a std::string the compiler throws a warning saying:
warning C4251: class 'std::basic_string<_Elem,_Traits,_Alloc>' needs to have dll-interface to be used by clients of class'
The only real solution to this problem that I've found other than "ignore the warning"(bad practice!) is to use const char* for the member variable rather than std::string but this is not really a solution, because now you have to convert your ugly concatenated (but dynamic) string back to the const char array you need. But you can't just tag .c_str() on the end (even though why would you want to because this concatenation is becoming more ridiculous by the second?) you have to make sure that std::string doesn't clean up your newly constructed string and leave you with garbage. So you have to do this inside the function that receives the string:
const std::string constString = (input);
m_constChar = constString.c_str();
Which is insane. Because now I traipsed across several different types of string, made my code ugly, added more lines than should need and all just to stick some characters together. Why is this so hard?
Solution?
So what's the solution? I feel that I should be able to make a function that concatenates const char*s together but also handle other object types such as std::string, int or double, I feel strongly that this should be capable in one line, and yet I'm unable to find any examples of it being achieved. Should I be working with char* rather than the constant variant, even though I've read that you should never change the value of char* so how would this help?
Are there any experienced C++ programmers who have resolved this issue and are now comfortable with C++ strings, what is your solution? Is there no solution? Is it impossible?
The standard way to build a string, formatting non-string types as strings, is a string stream
#include <sstream>
std::ostringstream ss;
ss << "Failure in " << __FUNCTION__ << ": foobar was " << foobar << "\n";
SetReport(ss.str());
If you do this often, you could write a variadic template to do that:
template <typename... Ts> std::string str(Ts&&...);
SetReport(str("Failure in ", __FUNCTION__, ": foobar was ", foobar, '\n'));
The implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.
In this particular case, string literals (including __FUNCTION__) can be concatenated by simply writing one after the other; and, assuming foobar is a std::string, that can be concatenated with string literals using +:
SetReport("Failure in " __FUNCTION__ ": foobar was " + foobar + "\n");
If foobar is a numeric type, you could use std::to_string(foobar) to convert it.
Plain string literals (e.g. "abc" and __FUNCTION__) and char const* do not support concatenation. These are just plain C-style char const[] and char const*.
Solutions are to use some string formatting facilities or libraries, such as:
std::string and concatenation using +. May involve too many unnecessary allocations, unless operator+ employs expression templates.
std::snprintf. This one does not allocate buffers for you and not type safe, so people end up creating wrappers for it.
std::stringstream. Ubiquitous and standard but its syntax is at best awkward.
boost::format. Type safe but reportedly slow.
cppformat. Reportedly modern and fast.
One of the simplest solution is to use an C++ empty string. Here I declare empty string variable named _ and used it in front of string concatenation. Make sure you always put it in the front.
#include <cstdio>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
string _ = "";
int main() {
char s[] = "chararray";
string result =
_ + "function name = [" + __FUNCTION__ + "] "
"and s is [" + s + "]\n";
printf( "%s", result.c_str() );
return 0;
}
Output:
function name = [main] and s is [chararray]
Regarding __FUNCTION__, I found that in Visual C++ it is a macro while in GCC it is a variable, so SetReport("Failure in " __FUNCTION__ "; foobar was " + foobar + "\n"); will only work on Visual C++. See: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b0084kay.aspx and https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Names.html
The solution using empty string variable above should work on both Visual C++ and GCC.
My Solution
I've continued to experiment with different things and I've got a solution which combines tivn's answer that involves making an empty string to help concatenate long std::string and character arrays together and a function of my own which allows single line copying of that std::string to a const char* which is safe to use when the string object leaves scope.
I would have used Mike Seymour's variadic templates but they don't seem to be supported by the Visual Studio 2012 I'm running and I need this solution to be very general so I can't rely on them.
Here is my solution:
Strings.h
#ifndef _STRINGS_H_
#define _STRINGS_H_
#include <string>
// tivn's empty string in the header file
extern const std::string _;
// My own version of .c_str() which produces a copy of the contents of the string input
const char* ToCString(std::string input);
#endif
Strings.cpp
#include "Strings.h"
const std::string str = "";
const char* ToCString(std::string input)
{
char* result = new char[input.length()+1];
strcpy_s(result, input.length()+1, input.c_str());
return result;
}
Usage
m_someMemberConstChar = ToCString(_ + "Hello, world! " + someDynamicValue);
I think this is pretty neat and works in most cases. Thank you everyone for helping me with this.
As of C++20, fmtlib has made its way into the ISO standard but, even on older iterations, you can still download and use it.
It gives similar capabilities as Python's str.format()(a), and your "ugly strings" example then becomes a relatively simple:
#include <fmt/format.h>
// Later on, where code is allowed (inside a function for example) ...
SetReport(fmt::format("Failure in {}: foobar was {}\n", __FUNCTION__, foobar));
It's much like the printf() family but with extensibility and type safety built in.
(a) But, unfortunately, not its string interpolation feature (use of f-strings), which has the added advantage of putting the expressions in the string at the place where they're output, something like:
set_report(f"Failure in {__FUNCTION__}: foobar was {foobar}\n");
If fmtlib ever got that capability, I'd probably wet my pants in excitement :-)
The code below shows 2 solutions (std::to_string and std::stringstream) that convert an int m_currentSoundTime to std::string. Is std::to_string or std::stringstream faster?
// Compute current sound time in minute and convert to string
stringstream currentTime;
currentTime << m_currentSoundTime / 60;
m_currentSoundTimeInMinute = currentTime.str();
or
m_currentSoundTimeInMinute = to_string( m_currentSoundTime / 60 );
In any reasonable library implementation to_string will be at least as fast as stringstream for this. However, if you wanted to put 10 ints into a string, stringstream will likely be faster. If you were to do to_string(a) + ", " + to_string(b) + /*...*/ every operation would probably cause an allocation and a copy from the previous string to the new allocation - not true with stringstream.
More importantly, it's pretty obvious from your example code that to_string is cleaner for dealing with converting a single int to a string.
This blog post tests several int-to-string conversion methods (using GCC 4.7 on Ubuntu 13.04). In this
case to_string is somewhat slower than stringstream. But this probably depends strongly on the compiler and std library.
I always wondered and never found a satisfying explanation into why would
std::string str = 50;
cout << str
give you garbage or doesn't compile
and
std::ostringstream str << 50;
cout << str // or str.str()
works.
What is the inherit limitation that prevents std::string to implement a conversion operator from integers and integer like types?
I imagine that there is a mistake in writing the question, and that the first case is:
std::string str;
str = 50;
For some reason that escapes me, the standard does have an assignment operator that allows the assignment of a single char to a std::string, so that will create an empty string, and it will set it's value to contain a single character with numeric value 50.
std::string str = 50;
This should not compile. basic_string has no constructor from a single int. Your implementation is defective. basic_string does not perform any conversions from any other types to string- it only handles strings.
std::ostringstream str << 50;
This performs a conversion from 50 to "50" and then outputs that. The stringstream is intended to convert from other types to text.
there is several way to convert integer to string
but the way you mention is wrong.
look at the following,
C++/STL:
ostringstream
to_string
C:
sprintf
When should I use stringstream instead of string::append()?
Supposing I'm going to catenate just strings.
stringstream ss;
ss << str1 << "str2" << ...
Write(ss.str());
Or:
string str;
str.reserve(10000);
str.append(str1);
str.append("str2");
...
Write(str);
Which of them is faster?
I don't know which one will be faster, but if I had to guess I'd say your second example is, especially since you've called the reserve member function to allocate a large space for expansion.
If you're only concatenating strings use string::append (or string::operator+=).
If you're going to convert numbers to their string representation, as well as format them during conversion, and then append the conversion results together, use stringstreams. I mention the formatting part explicitly because if you do not require formatting C++11 offers std::to_string which can be used to convert numeric types to strings.
string.append is much faster. Especially when you reserve.
If you are concatenating only strings, I would use string.append. I would only use stringstream when I need to automatically convert non-strings to strings for example:
const int x(42);
stringstream ss;
ss << "My favorite number is: " << x << std::endl;
Here stringstream automatically converts x to a string and appends it. I do not need to call atoi. Stringstream will convert all the basic types automatically for you. It is great for that purpose.
Also if you are only going to be directing data into the stringstream to convert it to a string later. You can use ostringstream which is for output.
I hope that helps.
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Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
How to convert a single char into an int
Well, I'm doing a basic program, wich handles some input like:
2+2
So, I need to add 2 + 2.
I did something like:
string mys "2+2";
fir = mys[0];
sec = mys[2];
But now I want to add "fir" to "sec", so I need to convert them to Int.
I tried "int(fir)" but didn't worked.
There are mulitple ways of converting a string to an int.
Solution 1: Using Legacy C functionality
int main()
{
//char hello[5];
//hello = "12345"; --->This wont compile
char hello[] = "12345";
Printf("My number is: %d", atoi(hello));
return 0;
}
Solution 2: Using lexical_cast(Most Appropriate & simplest)
int x = boost::lexical_cast<int>("12345");
Solution 3: Using C++ Streams
std::string hello("123");
std::stringstream str(hello);
int x;
str >> x;
if (!str)
{
// The conversion failed.
}
Alright so first a little backround on why what you attempted didn't work. In your example, fir is declared as a string. When you attempted to do int(fir), which is the same as (int)fir, you attempted a c-style cast from a string to an integer. Essentially you will get garbage because a c-style cast in c++ will run through all of the available casts and take the first one that works. At best your going to get the memory value that represents the character 2, which is dependent upon the character encoding your using (UTF-8, ascii etc...). For instance, if fir contained "2", then you might possibly get 0x32 as your integer value (assuming ascii). You should really never use c-style casts, and the only place where it's really safe to use them are conversions between numeric types.
If your given a string like the one in your example, first you should separate the string into the relevant sequences of characters (tokens) using a function like strtok. In this simple example that would be "2", "+" and "2". Once you've done that you can simple call a function such as atoi on the strings you want converted to integers.
Example:
string str = "2";
int i = atoi(str.c_str()); //value of 2
However, this will get slightly more complicated if you want to be able to handle non-integer numbers as well. In that case, your best bet is to separate on the operand (+ - / * etc), and then do a find on the numeric strings for a decimal point. If you find one you can treat it as a double and use the function atof instead of atoi, and if you don't, just stick with atoi.
Have you tried atoi or boost lexical cast?