Question

Here’s a related topic.

I’m looking for something slightly different, I’m printing out a 4×4 floating point matrix. In fact I’m using this prettyprint method to do it, which will preclude me from using printf formatting which I’m a little more familiar with.

I can set ios_base::width() to set a minimum width to pad out the zeros and ones but the likes of 0.6666667 screws up the alignment. I figure I can set precision but it only affects the number of significant figures and not the total number of char’s produced by the value. I can’t seem to use unsetf on an ostream to set ‘default notation’… Even if I could do that I suspect a minus sign would mess up alignment anyway.

Is there a workaround?

Answer 1

My temporary solution is width(7) and precision(4). It gives me 4 digits after the decimal point and 3 which is space to put the minus sign, a single digit, and the decimal point. I have to check and modify width in order to accomodate (some of the) values larger than 99.9999 or less than -9.9999 to preserve alignment. This has the benefit that 567890123 will not be printed as 5678901, all it will do is throw off alignment (a lot, it will be printed as 567890123.0000).