Class printable_string

Synopsis

#include "breeze/text/printable_string.hpp"

class printable_string

Description

A string with non-printable chars escaped.

Represents a string that prints to an ostream without non-printable characters.

If a character has a corresponding simple-escape-sequence (such as \a), it is displayed using that escape sequence. Otherwise, if it is in the range [0x20, 0x7e] , it is displayed directly. Otherwise an escape sequence of the form \x... is used. The goal is, for instance, to send the output to a log and then read it from another machine. The number of digits in any hexadecimal escape sequence is the ceiling of the quotient between CHAR_BIT and 4 (they are left-padded with zeroes); note that this is different from character and string literals, where there's no limit to the number of hexadecimal digits, and that e.g. \0 is represented, when CHAR_BIT == 8, as \x00 . In general, to read a printable_string unambiguously you need to know the value of CHAR_BIT on the source machine.

A printable_string can be constructed "from a non-string" (i.e. from a null pointer): this is useful for debugging purposes. In this special case, only, the printable_string outputs without quotes. Otherwise, it is always enclosed in double quotes and a double quote character in the string is escaped, as is usual in C++.

Instances of this class maintain a copy of the string, so the user does not have to worry about the lifetime of the object given to the constructor.

Methods

	printable_string overload
	to_string

Source

Lines 59-74 in breeze/text/printable_string.hpp.

class printable_string
{
public:
    explicit            printable_string( char const * ) ;
    explicit            printable_string( std::string const & ) ;

    std::string         to_string() const ;

private:
    friend std::ostream &
                    operator <<( std::ostream & dest,
                                 printable_string const & ) ;

    maybe< std::string >
                        m_value ;
} ;