www.kbcafe.

com

C++ Tricks
by Randy Charles Morin
This is just a small note to explain some of the new functions that I’ve added to the
kbcafe C++ library of late. You can get the latest copies of the files of this library at
http://ca.msnusers.com/KBCafecom/files.msnw?fc_p=%2Fkbcafelib&fc_a=0. The files
in the kbcafelib.zip file do not contain the changes that I mention herein. You should
download the three latest files separate.

• Replace.h

• trim.h

• convert.h

1 Find and Replace

First, I notice that the Replace.h file was in error, so I corrected it. Now the
findandreplace function works more as expected. I must have been drinking when I
originally wrote that function.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: findandreplace template function
template
void findandreplace( T& source, const T& find, const T& replace )
{
size_t j;
for (;(j = source.find( find )) != T::npos;)
{
source.replace( j, find.length(), replace );
}
}

The template functions works with a collection. It takes a source collection and replaces
any occurrences of one string in the collection with another. So, if you were using this on
the string class, the function prototype would be as follows.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: findandreplace with STL’s string
void findandreplace( std::string & source,
const std::string & find, const std::string & replace );

I only noticed the problem in Replace.h when I was writing a utility to read the contents
of a file, do a search and replace on two strings and finally output the result to the
standard output. I uploaded this utility to the kbcafeutil folder
http://ca.msnusers.com/KBCafecom/files.msnw?fc_p=%2Fkbcafeutils&fc_a=0. You can
download the utility and the source code from this folder.
This utility shows a great candidate usage of the findandreplace function. Lets examine
one function in this utility.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: ProcessFile
void ProcessFile()

Copyright 2001-2002 Randy Charles Morin

 www.kbcafe.com

{
std::ifstream file;
file.open(filename.c_str());
if (!file.is_open())
{
std::cerr << "Cannot Find File " << filename << std::endl;;
return;
}

std::stringstream input;

char buffer[2] = {0};

while (file)
{
file.read(buffer, 1);
input << buffer;
}

std::string str;
str = input.str();
kbcafe::findandreplace(str, searchtext, replacetext);

std::cout << str << std::endl;

}

This function opens a file, reads its entire contents into an STL string, then runs the
search and replace on that string. Finally the string is output to the standard output. In
most cases, this will be the console window.

2 Trim
The second change to the library is the addition of a new file that simulates Visual Basic
functions TRIM, LTRIM and RTRIM. These functions work with either of the STL
string classes, i.e. string and wstring.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: Trim Functions
// trim_right() family.
inline std::string trim_right ( const std::string & source ,
const std::string & t = " " )
{
std::string str = source;
return str.erase ( str.find_last_not_of ( t ) + 1 ) ;
}

inline std::wstring trim_right ( const std::wstring & source ,

const std::wstring & t = L" " )
{
std::wstring str = source;
return str.erase ( str.find_last_not_of ( t ) + 1 ) ;
}

// trim_left() family.
inline std::string trim_left ( const std::string & source ,
const std::string & t = " " )
{
std::string str = source;
return str.erase ( 0 , source.find_first_not_of ( t ) ) ;
}

inline std::wstring trim_left ( const std::wstring & source ,

const std::wstring & t = L" " )
{
std::wstring str = source;
return str.erase ( 0 , source.find_first_not_of ( t ) ) ;
}

// trim() family.

Copyright 2001-2002 Randy Charles Morin

 www.kbcafe.com

inline std::string trim ( const std::string & source ,

const std::string & t = " " )
{
std::string str = source;
return trim_left ( trim_right ( str , t ) , t ) ;
}

inline std::wstring trim ( const std::wstring & source ,

const std::wstring & t = L" " )
{
std::wstring str = source;
return trim_left ( trim_right ( str , t ) , t ) ;
}

I wish I could have templated these functions, but I found too many issues related to the
second parameter. Basically, I had to template the second parameter to present the wide
default space versus the 8-bit default space. This causes the template to be more difficult
to use than I’d hoped. So rather than let the end user deal with that complexity, I just
wrote the six functions without using templates.

3 Convert
The last change was the addition of the convert.h header file. This file presents three
functions for converting to different string representations of decimals, hexadecimals and
binary. I could have written more, but the requirements were only for these three at the
time.
I needed a function to convert a binary string to a decimal string and vice versa.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: Binary and Decimal
std::string binarytodecimal(const std::string & rhs)
{
long sum = 0;

for (int i=0;i <rhs.length();i++)

{
if (rhs[i] == '0')
{
sum *= 2;
continue;
} else
if (rhs[i] == '1')
{
sum = (sum*2) + 1;
continue;
}
else
{
break;
}
};

std::stringstream ss;
ss << sum;
return ss.str();
};

std::string decimaltobinary(const std::string & rhs)

{
std::stringstream ss;
ss << rhs;
long l;
ss >> l;

char buffer[256];

Copyright 2001-2002 Randy Charles Morin

 www.kbcafe.com

::itoa(l, buffer, 2);

return buffer;
};

I also needed a way of representing a number in hex format in a string. One way of doing
this would be to send it to a stream object using the hex manipulator, and then convert it
back to a string object.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: Hex Streams
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])

{
std::stringstream ss;
ss << std::hex << 123;
std::string str = ss.str();
std::cout << str;
return 0;
}

But I’d hate to do this each time I wanted to do the conversion. Rather, I wrote a function
to do the same.
Listing Error! Bookmark not defined.: Hex String
std::string outputashex(unsigned long l)
{
char buffer[1024];
::itoa(l, buffer, 16);

return buffer;
};

I used the C run-time library itoa function to perform the conversion. I could also have
used a stringstream and the hex manipulator to the same affect. I would suspect the later
would have been a better choice. I might make that change in the near future.
Note, that I couldn’t find a manipulator that would allow me to represent an integer in
binary format on a stream. I’m a little confused on why this would be. If anybody knows
why, then I’d be glad to hear it. Or for that matter, is there something that I missed?

About the Author

Randy Charles Morin is the Lead Architect of SportMarkets Development from Toronto,
Ontario, Canada and lives with his wife and two kids in Brampton, Ontario. He is the
author of the www.kbcafe.com website, author of Wiley’s Programming Windows
Services book and co-author of many other programming books and articles.

Copyright 2001-2002 Randy Charles Morin