Re: Printing non-printable characters

From:
Michael Doubez <michael.doubez@free.fr>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Wed, 18 May 2011 06:59:36 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<4395e145-bd35-41b8-a804-979018262a23@l30g2000vbn.googlegroups.com>
On 18 mai, 09:55, Alex Vinokur <alex.vino...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

// --------------------
#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

int main()
{
        char data[5];
  data[0] = 'a';
  data[1] = 5;
  data[2] = 'b';
  data[3] = 10;
  data[4] = 0;

  for (std::size_t i = 0; i < sizeof(data); i++)
  {
        char ch = data[i];

        if (isprint(static_cast<int>(ch)) != 0)
        {
                        std::cout << ch;
                }
                else
        {
                std::cout << "\\" << std::oct << static_c=

ast<int>(ch) << std::dec;

    }
  }
  std::cout << std::endl;

  return 0;

}

// ------------------

Output:
a\5b\12\0

Is it possible to get the same or similar output without loop in the
program?


There is James Kanze's filtering streambuf technique. I don't have it
right now because the last time I checked, his site on neuf.fr was
down.

But you can still use a hand made streambuf filter which wrap a
streambuf and use overflow function for encoding the output (defining
the relevant underflow is left as an exercise and is much harder):

class EncodedStreambuf : public streambuf
{
  public:
    EncodedStreambuf( streambuf* sbuf );

  public: // decorates m_sbuf
    virtual int underflow() ;
    virtual int sync() ;
    virtual streambuf* setbuf( char* p , int len ) ;

   // encode output
   virtual int overflow( int ch ){
     if ( ch == EOF || isprint( ch ) ) return m_sbuf->overflow( ch );
     // should encode - chech for usual \r\n... that shouldn't be
encoded
     char code[5]="\\000";
     ch|=0x00ff;
     char* it=&code[4];
     while(ch){
       *it=ch&0x07;
       ch>>3;
     }
     return m_sbuf->xsputn(code,sizeof(code)-1);
   }

  private:
     streambuf* m_sbuf ;
} ;

Well, I hope you get the idea.
Then you can define EncodedStream that take in input a stream and
installs the wrapping streambuf in it upon construction and restore it
upon destruction.

Something like:
class EncodingOStream
{
  public:
    EncodingOStream( std::ostream& os)
      : m_encoder(os.rdbuf()) // build EncodedStreambuf
    {
      os.rdbuf(&m_encoder); // install EncodedStreambuf
    }
    ~EncodingOStream(){
       os.rdbuf(m_encoder.streambuf()); // uninstall EncodedStreambuf

     }
  // ....
};

In the final code, you simply write:

char data[5];
  data[0] = 'a';
  data[1] = 5;
  data[2] = 'b';
  data[3] = 10;
  data[4] = 0;

EncodedOstream os(std::cout);
std::cout<<data<<std::endl;

Now that I have given the hard solution, a simple solution if you
don't mind the overhead is:
std::string encodeString( std::string const & str )
{
  // boilerplate for encoding string
}
and
std::cout<<encodeString(data)<<std::endl;

--
Michael

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