copy to cout with hex flag set.

Question

Hi, having something like this:

void print_signs()
{
const char* chars[] = {"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"};
std::copy(chars,chars + 1,std::ostream_iterator<const char*>(cout));
cout << hex; //trying to change the way output works for next line
std::copy(chars,chars + 1,std::ostream_iterator<const char*>(cout));
}

is there a way to have cout print them in hex format (using STL components only)? Thank you.

Answer 1

void print_signs()
{
    const std::string chars("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789");
    std::cout << std::hex;
    std::copy(chars.begin(), chars.end(), std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout));
}

And If you wan't to preserve the exact typing of the original:

void print_signs()
{
    const char* chars[] = {"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"};
    const size_t charCount = strlen(chars[0]);
    std::cout << std::hex;
    std::copy(chars[0], chars[0] + charCount, std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout));
}

If you absolutely don't want to use strlen I you could use:

const size_t charCount = std::string(chars[0]).length();

but this is not as efficient as std::string(...) will need to allocate memory from the heap.

/A.B.