format output

hi all!

I have a question, maybe a stupid one, but I really don't get the reason why this thing is happening..
I have some data I want to print to my C++ program's output in columns,so I use tabs the way below: (Linux environment)

Code:

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cout<<"User's nickname  is:\t"<<nickname<<"\tUser's id is:\t"<<id<<"\tUser's name is:\t"<<name<<endl;

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Now the strange thing is that the first tab comes as a white space,
the other 2 tabs are ok and the tab "\tUser's name is
comes out as a tab for some of users or as a white space for the rest of them....Why is that?Is there another way to format the output instead of tabs?

O_o

Because that is the pretty much the definition of a tab?

What are you trying to do exactly?

Are you trying to get all your data to line up? The tab character alone is not sufficient for that. You'll have to do some counting and use `std::setw(int)' or similar.

Soma

Quote:

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Originally Posted by phantomotap

O_o

Because that is the pretty much the definition of a tab?

What are you trying to do exactly?

Are you trying to get all your data to line up? The tab character alone is not sufficient for that. You'll have to do some counting and use `std::setw(int)' or similar.

Soma

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I want all my data to be in 3 columns ,one for nicknames ,one for ids and one for names
I thought that was what tab does..

Formatted Output in C++ Using iomanip - Cprogramming.com

Nope.

The tab character says "Position the next character at the next nearest tab inset."

If your string is a multiple of the tab inset the tab character will insert "tab inset" spaces in a text view.

If your string is less than a multiple of the tab inset the tab character will insert spaces until the next character would line up with the nearest next tab inset.

If the lengths of any two strings to be aligned at specific insets differ by more than tab inset spaces the tab character is insufficient.

Like I said, if you want nicely aligned data columns you'll have to do some counting.

Soma

thank you guys!

Actually I did use the setw as below but

cout<<"User's id is:"<< setw(10) <<user.id<< setw(10) <<"User's host is:"<<setw(10)<<user.host<<setw(10)<<"User's full name is :"<<setw(5)<<user.name<<setw(10)<<user.nickname<<e ndl;

and it doesn't even see some of the setw..It gives me that:

User's id is: 1000User's host is :hostname User's full name is: NameNickname

Why is that??

2 things
1) setw never truncates the output
2) default alignment is right.
Kurt

In other words, there's no point using setw(10) to print a string that's longer than 10 characters, as it's not allowed to add a negative number of spaces.
Read the documentation on how it works.