Writing Your Own Manipulators Without Arguments (Standard C++ Library)

Writing Your Own Manipulators Witho...

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Standard C++ Library Reference

Writing Your Own Manipulators Without Arguments

Writing manipulators that do not use arguments requires neither class derivation nor use of complex macros. Suppose your printer requires the pair <ESC>[ to enter bold mode. You can insert this pair directly into the stream:

cout << "regular " << '\033' << '[' << "boldface" << endl;

Or you can define the bold manipulator, which inserts the characters:

ostream& bold( ostream& os ) {
    return os << '\033' << '[';
}
cout << "regular " << bold << "boldface" << endl;

The globally defined bold function takes an ostream reference argument and returns the ostream reference. It is not a member function or a friend because it does not need access to any private class elements. The bold function connects to the stream because the stream's << operator is overloaded to accept that type of function, using a declaration that looks something like this:

_Myt& operator<<(ios_base& (__cdecl *_Pfn)(ios_base&))
{   
   // call ios_base manipulator
   (*_Pfn)(*(ios_base *)this);
   return (*this);
}

You can use this feature to extend other overloaded operators. In this case, it is incidental that bold inserts characters into the stream. The function is called when it is inserted into the stream, not necessarily when the adjacent characters are printed. Thus, printing could be delayed because of the stream's buffering.

Reference

Output Streams