Perform output if stream is good

[William Payne]

Hi, I have a function declared as:

void foo(const std::string& s, std:stream& verbose_output);

I want foo() to write a lot of data to the ostream if it's a valid stream.
If it's valid or not should depend on user input (command line arguments
actually). If the user decides he/she wants verbose output, I will pass
std::cout as the last argument when calling foo(). But what should I pass if
the user doesn't want any output? And how should foo() check if the stream
is good? verbose_output.good()?.

Thanks for any replies

/ WP

 

[Victor Bazarov]

void foo(const std::string& s, std:stream& verbose_output);

I want foo() to write a lot of data to the ostream if it's a valid stream.
If it's valid or not should depend on user input (command line arguments
actually). If the user decides he/she wants verbose output, I will pass
std::cout as the last argument when calling foo(). But what should I pass
if the user doesn't want any output? And how should foo() check if the
stream is good? verbose_output.good()?.

Yes...

Invent your own stream with '/dev/null' buffer which will always be valid
and pass when you don't need verbosity.

The problem is that if you have a reference to a stream, it must be some
real stream, otherwise where did you get a reference to it. Of course,
you could use 'ostringstream' instead, but I am not sure what you make it
"bad"...

Victor

 

[William Payne]

Yes...

Invent your own stream with '/dev/null' buffer which will always be valid
and pass when you don't need verbosity.

The problem is that if you have a reference to a stream, it must be some
real stream, otherwise where did you get a reference to it. Of course,
you could use 'ostringstream' instead, but I am not sure what you make it
"bad"...

Victor

Thanks for your reply, Victor. I think I will just add a third parameter to
foo(), a boolean telling it if to use the stream or not.

/ WP

 

[Pete Becker]

Hi, I have a function declared as:

void foo(const std::string& s, std:stream& verbose_output);

I want foo() to write a lot of data to the ostream if it's a valid stream.

If the stream isn't valid writes to it do nothing. So all you need to do
is set badbit.

 

[=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Juli=E1n?= Albo]

Invent your own stream with '/dev/null' buffer which will always be valid
and pass when you don't need verbosity.

I have this tiny class that can be useful:

//*********************************************************
// Null ostream class.
//*********************************************************

class Nullbuff : public std::streambuf
{
public:
Nullbuff ()
{
setbuf (0, 0);
}
protected:
int overflow (int)
{
setp (pbase (), epptr () );
return 0;
}
int sync ()
{
return 0;
}
};

class Nullostream : public std:stream
{
public:
Nullostream () :
std:stream (& buff)
{ }
private:
Nullbuff buff;
};

 

[David Hilsee]

Thanks for your reply, Victor. I think I will just add a third parameter to
foo(), a boolean telling it if to use the stream or not.

Pointers are typically used for "optional" parameters. If you use a pointer
instead of a reference, you can pass a null pointer when you don't want the
output, and check to see if the pointer is null instead of using a separate
boolean value. I think most programmers would find that approach more
appealing. I'm assuming that foo() will completely ignore the stream when
the boolean flag indicates that it should, of course.

 

[Ron Natalie]

Invent your own stream with '/dev/null' buffer which will always be valid
and pass when you don't need verbosity.

You can just write your own streambuf class that just has no-op put functions.