I would like to print a bunch of integers on 2 fields with '0'
as fill character. I can do it but it leads to code duplication. How should I change the code so that the code duplication can be factored out?
#include <ctime>
#include <sstream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
string timestamp() {
time_t now = time(0);
tm t = *localtime(&now);
ostringstream ss;
t.tm_mday = 9; // cheat a little to test it
t.tm_hour = 8;
ss << (t.tm_year+1900)
<< setw(2) << setfill('0') << (t.tm_mon+1) // Code duplication
<< setw(2) << setfill('0') << t.tm_mday
<< setw(2) << setfill('0') << t.tm_hour
<< setw(2) << setfill('0') << t.tm_min
<< setw(2) << setfill('0') << t.tm_sec;
return ss.str();
}
int main() {
cout << timestamp() << endl;
return 0;
}
I have tried
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& s, int i) {
return s << std::setw(2) << std::setfill('0') << i;
}
but it did not work, the operator<<
calls are ambigous.
EDIT I got 4 awesome answers and I picked the one that is perhaps the simplest and the most generic one (that is, doesn't assume that we are dealing with timestamps). For the actual problem, I will probably use std::put_time
or strftime
though.
You need a proxy for your string stream like this:
struct stream{
std::ostringstream ss;
stream& operator<<(int i){
ss << std::setw(2) << std::setfill('0') << i;
return *this; // See Note below
}
};
Then your formatting code will just be this:
stream ss;
ss << (t.tm_year+1900)
<< (t.tm_mon+1)
<< t.tm_mday
<< t.tm_hour
<< t.tm_min
<< t.tm_sec;
return ss.ss.str();
ps. Note the general format of my stream::operator<<() which does its work first, then returns something.