Thread: Writing C#'s Console::WriteLine in C++

There is something that I would really enjoy in C++ if it is possible.

Code:

	class Console
	{
	public:
		template <class T> static void WriteLine(T text)
		{
			std::cout << text << std::endl;
		}

		template <class T> static void Write(T text)
		{
			std::cout << text;
		}
	};

This works for a single data type. However, what would I do if I had something like this?

float price = 5.25f;
Console::WriteLine("The price is " + price + "."); // outputs The price is 5.25.

I would assume I need to overload the operator '+' somehow within this and concatenate everything together into a final string. I know C# isn't C++, and visa-versa, but for some programming tasks this would save some work. I learned not to ever use std::cout directly as much as Java's System.out.println(). Instead they should be in wrappers so we can change output in one method instead of changing it throughout the entire project. This also allows us to output to a GUI, file, or whatever later on if we ever wished. So something above would be ideal and better abstracted, although I'm not sure how to go about something like it.

If you really need a way to easily swap io functionality mid-program, try the following:

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
  ostream *output;

  // Let's do some output to the console:
  output = &cout;
  *output << "Hey!" << endl;

  // Now let's output to a file instead:
  ofstream file("tmp.txt");
  output = &file;

  *output << "Hey!" << endl;

  file.close();

  return 0;
}

You could try declaring a global reference to an ostream object - then only this reference would need to change when you wanted to switch the code from using cout to something else (Since cout is already a global variable, it won't matter having a global reference to it instead)

And of course, the sick macro solution:

Code:

#define WriteLine(x) std::cout << x

You'll have to use "<<" instead of "+" to join elements.

Code:

WriteLine("This is " << "Ill advised.");