Converting bool to text in C++

Question

Maybe this is a dumb question, but is there any way to convert a boolean value to a string such that 1 turns to \"true\" and 0 turns to \"false\"? I could just use an if st

Answer 1

C++20 std::format("{}"

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/format/formatter#Standard_format_specification claims that the default output format will be the string by default:

auto s6 = std::format("{:6}", true);  // value of s6 is "true  "

and:

The available bool presentation types are:

• none, s: Copies textual representation (true or false, or the locale-specific form) to the output.
• b, B, c, d, o, x, X: Uses integer presentation types with the value static_cast(value).

Related: std::string formatting like sprintf

Answer 2

This post is old but now you can use std::to_string to convert a lot of variable as std::string.

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/string/basic_string/to_string

Answer 3

C++ has proper strings so you might as well use them. They're in the standard header string. #include <string> to use them. No more strcat/strcpy buffer overruns; no more missing null terminators; no more messy manual memory management; proper counted strings with proper value semantics.

C++ has the ability to convert bools into human-readable representations too. We saw hints at it earlier with the iostream examples, but they're a bit limited because they can only blast the text to the console (or with fstreams, a file). Fortunately, the designers of C++ weren't complete idiots; we also have iostreams that are backed not by the console or a file, but by an automatically managed string buffer. They're called stringstreams. #include <sstream> to get them. Then we can say:

std::string bool_as_text(bool b)
{
    std::stringstream converter;
    converter << std::boolalpha << b;   // flag boolalpha calls converter.setf(std::ios_base::boolalpha)
    return converter.str();
}

Of course, we don't really want to type all that. Fortunately, C++ also has a convenient third-party library named Boost that can help us out here. Boost has a nice function called lexical_cast. We can use it thus:

boost::lexical_cast<std::string>(my_bool)

Now, it's true to say that this is higher overhead than some macro; stringstreams deal with locales which you might not care about, and create a dynamic string (with memory allocation) whereas the macro can yield a literal string, which avoids that. But on the flip side, the stringstream method can be used for a great many conversions between printable and internal representations. You can run 'em backwards; boost::lexical_cast<bool>("true") does the right thing, for example. You can use them with numbers and in fact any type with the right formatted I/O operators. So they're quite versatile and useful.

And if after all this your profiling and benchmarking reveals that the lexical_casts are an unacceptable bottleneck, that's when you should consider doing some macro horror.

Answer 4

If you decide to use macros (or are using C on a future project) you should add parenthesis around the 'b' in the macro expansion (I don't have enough points yet to edit other people's content):

#define BOOL_STR(b) ((b)?"true":"false")

This is a defensive programming technique that protects against hidden order-of-operations errors; i.e., how does this evaluate for all compilers?

1 == 2 ? "true" : "false"

compared to

(1 == 2) ? "true" : "false"

Answer 5

Try this Macro. Anywhere you want the "true" or false to show up just replace it with PRINTBOOL(var) where var is the bool you want the text for.

#define PRINTBOOL(x) x?"true":"false"

Answer 6

With C++11 you might use a lambda to get a slightly more compact code and in place usage:

bool to_convert{true};
auto bool_to_string = [](bool b) -> std::string {
    return b ? "true" : "false";
};
std::string str{"string to print -> "};
std::cout<<str+bool_to_string(to_convert);

Prints:

string to print -> true