I wrote a very simple Log class for a game im writing just to see some info in the terminal. But the way i did it bugs me because i feel its too inefficient. Every time i log something its constructor and destructor are called. So if i want to print the current frame rate (ex 60fps) the cont/desct are called 60 times a sec (creating and destroying 60 log objects a second). i dont want to keep passing a log object around the game every time i want to log something and i dont want to use signletons. is there a better solutions.
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
class Log
{
public:
Log() : os()
{
}
~Log()
{
fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", os.str().c_str());
}
std::ostringstream &Write()
{
os << "from log class: " << 1337 << "\t";
return os;
}
private:
std::ostringstream os;
};
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
Log().Write() << "Hello world " << 45;
return 0;
}
I would recommend to go with some existing logging framework. People put a lot of efforts to make it as fast and as flexible as possible.
Here is good description of existing logging frameworks:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/696321/best-logging-framework-for-native-c
You are making an assumption that the constructor and destructor are inefficient. In my experience if they are declared in a header file (as yours are) and if they are simple (as yours are) then you can trust the compiler to inline them and do a very good job. The call to printf is going to dominate the time.
Related
In my project (Unreal Engine 4) I don't have an output stream - instead of this I can communicate via UE_LOG function, which works pretty much similar to printf(). The problem is that I just made a .dll library (without Unreal includes) which I want to communicate through the iostream. My idea is - inside .dll library I use standard cout to write messages into ostream, I use all of it in Unreal Engine functions, where I grab ostream in form of string and output it into UE_LOG function.
Problem is I always treated std::cout as a part of magic, without thinking what is really inside (I am pretty sure most of us did). How I can handle this? Easy ways won't work (like grabbing stringstream and outputing it into UE_LOG).
My idea is - inside .dll library I use standard cout to write messages into ostream
You actually can replace the output buffer used with std::cout with your own implementation. Use the std::ostream::rdbuf() function to do so (example from the reference docs):
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
int main()
{
std::ostringstream local;
auto cout_buff = std::cout.rdbuf(); // save pointer to std::cout buffer
std::cout.rdbuf(local.rdbuf()); // substitute internal std::cout buffer with
// buffer of 'local' object
// now std::cout work with 'local' buffer
// you don't see this message
std::cout << "some message";
// go back to old buffer
std::cout.rdbuf(cout_buff);
// you will see this message
std::cout << "back to default buffer\n";
// print 'local' content
std::cout << "local content: " << local.str() << "\n";
}
(in case my edit won't be positively reviewed)
From OP: Thanks to your hints I finally found how to solve my problem. Suppose I want to get stream from cout and send it to printf (because I think stdio library is superior to iostream). Here how I can do this:
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <cstdio>
using namespace std;
class ssbuf : public stringbuf{
protected:
int sync(){
printf("My buffer: %s",this->str().c_str());
str("");
return this->stringbuf::sync();
}
};
int main(){
ssbuf *buf = new ssbuf();
cout.rdbuf(buf);
cout<<"This is out stream "<<"and you cant do anything about it"<<endl;
cout<<"(don't) "<<"Vote Trump"<<endl;
}
Code is very raw, but it does it's job. I made child class of buffer which has method sync() downcasting original virtual method sync(). Except this it works like usual buffer, just grabs all console-out stream - exactly what we wanted. The str("") inside is to clean the buffer - probably not outputted stream doesn't clean itself.
Great thanks for help! Big GRIN for you! :D
I'm working on a small C++11 application (an SDL2 game) and i'm having a hard time "porting" some of my object-oriented knowledge from PHP/Java to C++. For example, in order to create an elegant error logging approach, i would create a class with various adapters and centralize logging there. I already did that in C++, but i have no idea on how my classes should be using the Logger class.
In Java and PHP, i would use dependency injection, and put the Logger as a class member variable in them. But in C++, what's the proper way? I don't really think that going static would be nice.
Oh man.
To me logging is similar to date/time handling: the basic case is trivial, but anything more than trivial is extremely complicated: no middle ground.
Let me advise you to look into a general purpose logging library such as Pantheios or Boost.Log.
The reason why I advice for this approach as opposed to making "your own effort", is that I know first hand how the "logging situation" goes:
you start with a simple "write to file" or "write to screen"
then you need to also log to another device
then you want to filter out severity levels
then you want to send your logs via pipes
then you want to turn off logging
And it all becomes very, very difficult, and the logging classes start polluting your code.
So, like I said: based on my limited experience, I would encourage you to look into the suggested libraries.
Good luck.
Edit: Boost.Log examples
Just for completeness of the post (refer to page for details).
Trivial case:
#include <boost/log/trivial.hpp>
int main(int, char*[]) {
BOOST_LOG_TRIVIAL(trace) << "A trace severity message";
BOOST_LOG_TRIVIAL(debug) << "A debug severity message";
BOOST_LOG_TRIVIAL(info) << "An informational severity message";
BOOST_LOG_TRIVIAL(warning) << "A warning severity message";
BOOST_LOG_TRIVIAL(error) << "An error severity message";
BOOST_LOG_TRIVIAL(fatal) << "A fatal severity message";
return 0;
}
One approach would be to pass a reference to a logger object around function calls. However, logging is a sort of an orthogonal aspect to application logic, so that explicitly passing that logger and having it as a member quickly becomes a nuisance and only adds artificial complexity.
I prefer having one global logger in the application. Modules can create its own loggers as child loggers of the main logger forming a hierarchy (I think this is similar to Python logging module) and control its output sink and verbosity independently if necessary.
I always use something like this:
class Log
{
public:
Log()
: m_filename( "dafault.log" )
{}
// if you wanna give other names eventually...
Log( const std::string & p_filename )
: m_filename( p_filename )
{}
virtual ~Log()
{
// implement your writeToFile() with std::ofstream
writeToFile( m_filename, m_stream, true );
}
template< typename T >
Log & operator<<( const T & p_value )
{
m_stream << p_value;
return *this;
}
private:
std::string m_filename;
std::ostringstream m_stream;
};
So this way I am able to log like this:
Log() << "My message in the log with numbers " << 1 << 2 << 3 << " and so on...";
Log( "other.log" ) << "Log in another file eventually...";
My current approach is to use a kind of dependency injection, using C++ strengths instead of magic. It does not require on anything specific to C++11 (except that __thread which is an extension could be replaced by thread_local if you wished to be Standard).
class LoggerEngine {
public:
static LoggerEngine* Current() { return CurrentE; }
virtual bool isActive(Level) { return true; }
virtual void log(char const* function,
char const* file,
int line,
std::string message) = 0;
// cuz' decorators rock
LoggerEngine* previous() const { return _previous; }
protected:
LoggerEngine(): _previous(CurrentE) { CurrentE = this; }
~LoggerEngine() { CurrentE = _previous; }
private:
static __thread LoggerEngine* CurrentE;
LoggerEngine* const _previous;
}; // class LoggerEngine
// in some .cpp file:
__thread LoggerEngine* LoggerEngine::CurrentE = 0;
And then, provide macros (to capture function, file and line):
#define LOG(L_, Message_) \
do { if (LoggerEngine* e = LoggerEngine::Current() and e->isActive(L_)) { \
std::ostringstream _28974986589657165; \
_28974986589657165 << Message_; \
e->log(__func__, __FILE__, __LINE__, _28974986589657165.str()); \
}} while(0);
However it could certainly be made better by using shims instead, because even though it prevents any computation in case the level is not active it still requires formatting of the full message (and the necessary memory allocation) even if it is going to truncate the message anyway (for example because it uses fixed-size buffers) and does not easily allow customization of the formatting.
The combination of stacking engines (and popping them off automatically using RAII) with thread-local behavior is really pretty neat. Most code only ever see an interface, without having to thread it by (cool when you have 4/5 different engines), and any level of the stack can switch the engine to something more appropriate.
There is one caveat, as is, no logging occurs before a first Engine is defined. For this reason I've often thought of defaulting to writing to the console if no engine is setup but... I've mostly changed my style to avoid computation before main is called since I cannot dependency-inject during this phase (and it's awkward if an exception fires...)
Usage is like this:
void benchmark() {
LOG(INFO, "Hello, World!");
Timer t;
{
MySinkLogger const _; (void)_; // a logger with "isActive" always false
for (size_t i = 0; i != 10000; ++i) {
LOG(INFO, "Flood!");
}
}
LOG(INFO, "Elapsed: " << t.elapsed());
}
int main() {
MyFileLoggerEngine const _("somefile.log"); (void)_; // a file logger
benchmark();
}
And normally this could create a file "somefile.log" containing:
2013-10-03T18:38:04.645512 mylaptop INFO <test.cpp#42> Hello, World!
2013-10-03T18:38:04.865765 mylaptop INFO <test.cpp#47> Elapsed: 0.220213s
I am making a smallish project, total of about 3-4 people. I want to have a solid way of debugging the application, by logs for example. Are there any good resources on how to structure it and such? I've heard a lot from project managers that a good logging feature is critical to each project, but I'm not sure how to do it.
I found this Dr. Dobb's article, Logging In C++, very useful regarding this subject.
Also on Dr. Dobb's: A Highly Configurable Logging Framework In C++
If all you want is a dead simple thread safe logging class which always outputs to stderr then you could use this class I wrote:
#ifndef _LOGGER_HPP_
#define _LOGGER_HPP_
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
/* consider adding boost thread id since we'll want to know whose writting and
* won't want to repeat it for every single call */
/* consider adding policy class to allow users to redirect logging to specific
* files via the command line
*/
enum loglevel_e
{logERROR, logWARNING, logINFO, logDEBUG, logDEBUG1, logDEBUG2, logDEBUG3, logDEBUG4};
class logIt
{
public:
logIt(loglevel_e _loglevel = logERROR) {
_buffer << _loglevel << " :"
<< std::string(
_loglevel > logDEBUG
? (_loglevel - logDEBUG) * 4
: 1
, ' ');
}
template <typename T>
logIt & operator<<(T const & value)
{
_buffer << value;
return *this;
}
~logIt()
{
_buffer << std::endl;
// This is atomic according to the POSIX standard
// http://www.gnu.org/s/libc/manual/html_node/Streams-and-Threads.html
std::cerr << _buffer.str();
}
private:
std::ostringstream _buffer;
};
extern loglevel_e loglevel;
#define log(level) \
if (level > loglevel) ; \
else logIt(level)
#endif
Use it like this:
// define and turn off for the rest of the test suite
loglevel_e loglevel = logERROR;
void logTest(void) {
loglevel_e loglevel_save = loglevel;
loglevel = logDEBUG4;
log(logINFO) << "foo " << "bar " << "baz";
int count = 3;
log(logDEBUG) << "A loop with " << count << " iterations";
for (int i = 0; i != count; ++i)
{
log(logDEBUG1) << "the counter i = " << i;
log(logDEBUG2) << "the counter i = " << i;
}
loglevel = loglevel_save;
}
If you are asking about logging frameworks and you work in C++, check out Apache's log4cxx. It takes a few moments to understand the architecture, but once you did, you realize that it is a good balance of flexibility, ease of use and (as they say) performance.
log4cxx has a very flexible configuration by witch you can control, without recompiling, where the output goes to (file / rotating file / console/etc.), the debugging level of subcomponents (e.g. you want to focus on a particular class / component so you set it to DEBUG level while the rest is on INFO), format of log entries etc.
If you are asking about general guidelines on how do logging, I haven't seen such (not that I actually looked for). I think this is mainly empiric - you decide what info is needed on each logging level like INFO, DEBUG etc., and you refine it according to your and your client's needs (don't forget that your client could also be a customer of the log, depending on your project).
Depends on what you mean by "logging". One form is simply to provide a method for printing the contents of some object to an output stream. For an object of type ClassName this entails writing an insertion operator for the class:
std::ostream &operator<< (std::ostream &stream, const ClassName & obj) {
// Implementation elided
}
With this at hand you can print an object of type ClassName to an output stream. This can be quite useful, so useful that some organizations require that every class implement such a method.
I would like to have an easy to use way to write code like:
#include <iostream>
int main (){
std::cout << "hello, world!\n";
}
but that supports i18n. Here is an example using gettext():
#include <libintl.h>
#include <iostream>
int main (){
std::cout << gettext("hello, world!\n");
}
This can then be processed by xgettext to produce a message catalog file that can be used
by translators to create various versions. These extra files can be handled on target
systems to allow the user to interact in a preferred language.
I would like to write the code something like this instead:
#include <i18n-iostream>
int main (){
i18n::cout << "hello, world!\n";
}
At build time the quoted strings would be examined by a program like xgettext to produce the
base message catalog file. << operator with argument i18n::cout would take a string
literal as the key to lookup the run-time text to use from a message catalog.
Does it exist somewhere?
At build time the quoted strings would be examined by a program like xgettext to produce the base message catalog file. << operator with argument i18n::cout would take a string literal as the key to lookup the run-time text to use from a message catalog.
You try to convert a string like a single instance, but it isn't/
The point, you don't want something like this. Think of:
if(n=1)
i18n::cout << "I need one apple"
else
i18n::cout << "I need " << n << " apples" ;
So why this is would not work, because "n=1" or "n!=1" works only for English, many other languages have more then one plural form, also it requires translation of "I need X apples" as signle instance.
I suggest you just to learn to deal with gettext, it is quite simple and powerful, many people had thought about it.
Another point, you are usually do not call gettext but
#include <libintl.h>
#include <iostream>
#define _(x) gettext(x)
int main (){
std::cout << _("hello, world!\n");
}
This makes the code much cleaner, also it is quite a "standard" feature to use "_" as gettext alias.
Just learn how to use it, before you try to make "nicer" API. Just to mention, gettext API is quite de-facto standard for many languages, not only C.
The short answer is "No" :)
Seriously, which aspects of internationalization are you interested in? ICU provides pretty much everything but does not feel like standard C++. There are other libraries smaller in scope that provide some i18n functionalities, i.e. UTF-CPP for handling UTF-8 encoded strings.
Personally I would go with this answer, but it might be possible to use a bit of streambuf magic to do this as the text is written to the stream. If you're really interested in doing this though, please take a look at Standard C++ IOStreams and Locales by Langer and Kreft, it's the bible of iostreams.
The following assumes that everything written to the buffer is to be translated, and that each full line can be translated completely:
std::string xgettext (std::string const & s)
{
return s;
}
The following transbuf class overrides the "overflow" function and
translates the buffer every time it sees a newline.
class transbuf : public std::streambuf {
public:
transbuf (std::streambuf * realsb) : std::streambuf (), m_realsb (realsb)
, m_buf () {}
~transbuf () {
// ... flush m_buf if necessary
}
virtual std::streambuf::int_type overflow (std::streambuf::int_type c) {
m_buf.push_back (c);
if (c == '\n') {
// We have a complete line, translate it and write it to our stream:
std::string transtext = xgettext (m_buf);
for (std::string::const_iterator i = transtext.begin ()
; i != transtext.end ()
; ++i) {
m_realsb->sputc (*i);
// ... check that overflow returned the correct value...
}
m_buf = "";
}
return c;
}
std::streambuf * get () { return m_realsb; }
// data
private:
std::streambuf * m_realsb;
std::string m_buf;
};
And here's an example of how that might be used:
int main ()
{
transbuf * buf = new transbuf (std::cout.rdbuf ());
std::ostream trans (buf);
trans << "Hello"; // Added to m_buf
trans << " World"; // Added to m_buf
trans << "\n"; // Causes m_buf to be written
trans << "Added to buffer\neach new line causes\n"
"the string to be translated\nand written" << std::endl;
delete buf;
}
You mean you just want another API? You could write a small wrapper, shouldn't be too hard and it would give you the possibility to use the best API you can think of :)
I try to write and read object of class into and from binary file in C++. I want to not write the data member individually but write the whole object at one time. For a simple example:
class MyClass {
public:
int i;
MyClass(int n) : i(n) {}
MyClass() {}
void read(ifstream *in) { in->read((char *) this, sizeof(MyClass)); }
void write(ofstream *out){ out->write((char *) this, sizeof(MyClass));}
};
int main(int argc, char * argv[]) {
ofstream out("/tmp/output");
ifstream in("/tmp/output");
MyClass mm(3);
cout<< mm.i << endl;
mm.write(&out);
MyClass mm2(2);
cout<< mm2.i << endl;
mm2.read(&in);
cout<< mm2.i << endl;
return 0;
}
However the running output show that the value of mm.i supposedly written to the binary file is not read and assigned to mm2.i correctly
$ ./main
3
2
2
So what's wrong with it?
What shall I be aware of when generally writing or reading an object of a class into or from a binary file?
The data is being buffered so it hasn't actually reached the file when you go to read it. Since you using two different objects to reference the in/out file, the OS has not clue how they are related.
You need to either flush the file:
mm.write(&out);
out.flush()
or close the file (which does an implicit flush):
mm.write(&out);
out.close()
You can also close the file by having the object go out of scope:
int main()
{
myc mm(3);
{
ofstream out("/tmp/output");
mm.write(&out);
}
...
}
Dumping raw data is a terrible idea, from multiple angles. This will break even worse once you add pointer data.
One suggestion would be to use Boost.Serialization which allows for far more robust data dumping.
Your main problem is the file does not contain the contents yet due to fstream buffering. Close or flush the file.
I'll echo "you shouldn't be doing this". If you print out sizeof(myc) in the code above it's probably 4, as you'd expect... BUT try changing read and write to be virtual. When I did so, it prints out the size as 16. Those 12 bytes are internal guts with sensitive values—and saving them out and then reading them back in would be like expecting a pointer value to be still good if you wrote it and loaded it again.
If you want to circumvent serialization and map C++ object memory directly to disk, there are ways to hack that. But rules are involved and it's not for the faint of heart. See POST++ (Persistent Object Storage for C++) as an example.
I'll add that you did not check the fail() or eof() status. If you had you'd have known you were misusing the fstream API. Try it again with:
void read(ifstream *in) {
in->read((char *) this, sizeof(myc));
if (in->fail())
cout << "read failed" << endl;
}
void write(ofstream *out){
out->write((char *) this, sizeof(myc));
if (out->fail())
cout << "write failed" << endl;
}
...and see what happens.
My C++ is pretty rust and highly under-tested, but you may want to take a look at Serialization and Unserialization. FAQ
I've done something similar using output.write((char*)&obj, sizeof(obj)), obj being an instance of your class. You may want to loop this if you want to write the data inside the object instead, which would generally be the case as you need members to be readable, right ?
Same thing for reading with read function. But if you have dynamic allocation to do then with this data, you need to handle it.