Question

Damage and Cost are integers, but as you can see in the code below I want to concatenate them with a string (if that’s the right word). How can I do this?

class Weapon : Shopable{
    private:
        int Damage;
    public:
        std::string getDesc() const{
            return getName()+"\t"+Damage+"\t"+Cost;
        }
};

Answer 1

Provide yourself with this template:

#include <sstream>

template <class TYPE> std::string Str( const TYPE & t ) {
    std::ostringstream os;
    os << t;
    return os.str();
}

You can then say:

return getName() + "\t" + Str( Damage ) + "\t" + Str(Cost);

Note this is pretty much equivalent to Boost’s lexical_cast, and to similar facilities in the upcoming standard. Also note that this function trades performance for convenience and type-safety.