Pretty-print C++ STL containers

Question

Please take note of the updates at the end of this post.

Update: I have created a public project on GitHub for this library!

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Answer 1

This has been edited a few times, and we have decided to call the main class that wraps a collection RangePrinter

This should work automatically with any collection once you have written the one-time operator<< overload, except that you will need a special one for maps to print the pair, and may want to customise the delimiter there.

You could also have a special "print" function to use on the item instead of just outputting it direct. A bit like STL algorithms allow you to pass in custom predicates. With map you would use it this way, with a custom printer for the std::pair.

Your "default" printer would just output it to the stream.

Ok, let's work on a custom printer. I will change my outer class to RangePrinter. So we have 2 iterators and some delimiters but have not customised how to print the actual items.

struct DefaultPrinter
{
   template< typename T >
   std::ostream & operator()( std::ostream& os, const T& t ) const
   {
     return os << t;
   }

   // overload for std::pair
   template< typename K, typename V >
   std::ostream & operator()( std::ostream & os, std::pair const& p)
   {
      return os << p.first << '=' << p.second;
   }
};

// some prototypes
template< typename FwdIter, typename Printer > class RangePrinter;

template< typename FwdIter, typename Printer > 
  std::ostream & operator<<( std::ostream &, 
        RangePrinter const& );

template< typename FwdIter, typename Printer=DefaultPrinter >
class RangePrinter
{
    FwdIter begin;
    FwdIter end;
    std::string delim;
    std::string open;
    std::string close;
    Printer printer;

    friend std::ostream& operator<< <>( std::ostream&, 
         RangePrinter const& );

public:
    RangePrinter( FwdIter b, FwdIter e, Printer p,
         std::string const& d, std::string const & o, std::string const& c )
      : begin( b ), end( e ), printer( p ), open( o ), close( c )
    {
    } 

     // with no "printer" variable
    RangePrinter( FwdIter b, FwdIter e,
         std::string const& d, std::string const & o, std::string const& c )
      : begin( b ), end( e ), open( o ), close( c )
    {
    } 

};


template
std::ostream& operator<<( std::ostream& os, 
          RangePrinter const& range )
{
    const Printer & printer = range.printer;

    os << range.open;
    FwdIter begin = range.begin, end = range.end;

    // print the first item
    if (begin == end) 
    { 
      return os << range.close; 
    }

    printer( os, *begin );

    // print the rest with delim as a prefix
    for( ++begin; begin != end; ++begin )
    {
       os << range.delim;
       printer( os, *begin );
    }
    return os << range.close;
}

Now by default it will work for maps as long as the key and value types are both printable and you can put in your own special item printer for when they are not (as you can with any other type), or if you do not want = as the delimiter.

I am moving the free-function to create these to the end now:

A free-function (iterator version) would look like something this and you could even have defaults:

template
RangePrinter rangePrinter
    ( const Collection& coll, const char * delim=",", 
       const char * open="[", const char * close="]")
{
   return RangePrinter< typename Collection::const_iterator >
     ( coll.begin(), coll.end(), delim, open, close );
}

You could then use it for std::set by

 std::cout << outputFormatter( mySet );

You can also write free-function version that take a custom printer and ones that take two iterators. In any case they will resolve the template parameters for you, and you will be able to pass them through as temporaries.