Question

Every time I send a char to the cout object, it displays in ASCII characters unless I cast it to an int.

Q: Is there a way to display the numerical value of a char without an explicit cast?

I read somewhere that doing too many casts in your code could lead to a loss of integrity (of your program). I am guessing that chars display in ASCII for a particular reason, but I’m not sure why.

I am essentially creating a game. I am using small numbers (unsigned chars) that I plan to display to the console. I may be paranoid, but I get this uneasy feeling whenever I spam static_cast<int> everywhere in my code.

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with type-casting, though, especially if you use static_cast to do it. That is what you should be using. It allows the compiler to validate the type-cast and make sure it is safe.

To change the behavior of the << operator, you would have to override the default << operator for char values, eg:

std::ostream& operator <<(std::ostream &os, char c)
{
    os << static_cast<int>(c);
    return os;
}

char c = ...;
std::cout << c;

You could create a custom type that takes a char as input and then implement the << operator for that type, eg:

struct CharToInt
{
    int val;
    CharToInt(char c) : val(static_cast<int>(c)) {}
};

std::ostream& operator <<(std::ostream &os, const CharToInt &c)
{
    os << c.val;
    return os;
}

char c = ...;
std::cout << CharToInt(c);

You could create a function that does something similar, then you don’t have to override the << operator, eg:

int CharToInt(char c)
{
    return c;
}

char c = ...;
std::cout << CharToInt(c);