Re: any improvements for this programme

From:
Jerry Coffin <jcoffin@taeus.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:23:42 -0600
Message-ID:
<MPG.210bc4d418fbfbb698993c@news.sunsite.dk>
In article <pan.2007.07.18.08.28.23.597694@gmail.com>,
geek.arnuld@gmail.com says...

/* C++ Primer 4/e
 * section 3.2 - String Standard Library

 * exercise 3.8
 * STATEMENT
 * write a programme to read strings from standard input, concatenate
 all of them * in one string where each input string is seperated by
 whitespace and then print it. */

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main()
{
  std::string input_string, final_string;

  while(std::cin >> input_string)
    if(final_string.empty()) // without "if" we will get a
    whitespace
      final_string += input_string; // at the beginning of final_string.
    else
      final_string = final_string + " " + input_string;

  std::cout << final_string << std::endl;

  return 0;
}


I'd generally do things a bit differently. Right now, you have a (mildly
messy) if statement in the inner loop. Unless it's crucial that there
NOT be an extra space after the final string, I'd just add a space after
the end of each string, which would simplify the code considerably.

Unless you're going to do something else with the data while it's stored
as a big string, I'd avoid using up the storage, and just copy data from
input to output, with padding added as necessary.

I'd consider using a standard algorithm instead of an explicit loop. The
first simplification (often) makes this step easier since it allows all
input to be treated uniformly.

Putting all those together gives a program that's quite a bit simpler,
but gives similar results:

#include <iostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <algorithm>

int main() {
    std::copy(std::istream_iterator<std::string>(std::cin),
        std::istream_iterator<std::string>(),
        std::ostream_iterator<std::string>(std::cout, " "));
    return 0;
}

To meet the original specification, we can use a stringstream instead of
copying directly to cout, and remove the extra space from the
intermediate string:

int main() {
    std::ostringstream temp;

    std::copy(std::istream_iterator<std::string>(std::cin),
        std::istream_iterator<std::string>(),
        std::ostream_iterator<std::string>(temp, " "));

    std::string data = std::string(temp.str(),
        0,
        temp.str().length()-1);

    std::cout << data;

    return 0;
}

--
    Later,
    Jerry.

The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

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