Question

I have a simple GUI program that uses a custom stringstream to redirect output from the console to a text field in the GUI (under some circumstances). currently. the window redraws any time I hit enter, but it’s possible that output could be generated at other times. Is there a way to register a function with the stringstream that gets executed every time the << operator is used on the stream?

NOTE

I should have pointed out that I cannot use C++11 in my solution. the machines on which this will be compiled and run will not have c++11 available.

Answer 1

Personally, I wouldn’t use an std::ostringstream (or even an std::stringstream) for this at all! Instead, I would create my own stream buffer taking care of sending the data to the GUI. That is, I’d overwrite std::streambuf::overflow() and std::streambuf::sync() to send the current data to the GUI. To also make sure that any output is sent immediately, I’d set up an std::ostream to have std::ios_base::unitbuf set. Actually, sending the changes to a function is quite simple, i.e., I’ll implement this:

#include <streambuf>
#include <ostream>
#include <functional>
#include <string>
#include <memory>
#include <iostream> // only for testing...

#if HAS_FUNCTION
typedef std::function<void(std::string)> function_type;
#else
class function_type
{
private:
    struct base {
        virtual ~base() {}
        virtual base* clone() const = 0;
        virtual void  call(std::string const&) = 0;
    };
    template <typename Function>
    struct concrete
        : base {
        Function d_function;
        concrete(Function function)
            : d_function(function) {
        }
        base* clone() const { return new concrete<Function>(this->d_function); }
        void  call(std::string const& value) { this->d_function(value); }
    };
    std::auto_ptr<base> d_function;
public:
    template <typename Function>
    function_type(Function function)
        : d_function(new concrete<Function>(function)) {
    }
    function_type(function_type const& other)
        : d_function(other.d_function->clone()) {
    }
    function_type& operator= (function_type other) {
        this->swap(other);
        return *this;
    }
    ~function_type() {}
    void swap(function_type& other) {
        std::swap(this->d_function, other.d_function);
    }
    void operator()(std::string const& value) {
        this->d_function->call(value);
    }
};
#endif

class functionbuf
    : public std::streambuf {
private:
    typedef std::streambuf::traits_type traits_type;
    function_type d_function;
    char          d_buffer[1024];
    int overflow(int c) {
        if (!traits_type::eq_int_type(c, traits_type::eof())) {
            *this->pptr() = traits_type::to_char_type(c);
            this->pbump(1);
        }
        return this->sync()? traits_type::not_eof(c): traits_type::eof();
    }
    int sync() {
        if (this->pbase() != this->pptr()) {
            this->d_function(std::string(this->pbase(), this->pptr()));
            this->setp(this->pbase(), this->epptr());
        }
        return 0;
    }
public:
    functionbuf(function_type const& function)
        : d_function(function) {
        this->setp(this->d_buffer, this->d_buffer + sizeof(this->d_buffer) - 1);
    }
};

class ofunctionstream
    : private virtual functionbuf
    , public std::ostream {
public:
    ofunctionstream(function_type const& function)
        : functionbuf(function)
        , std::ostream(static_cast<std::streambuf*>(this)) {
        this->flags(std::ios_base::unitbuf);
    }
};

void some_function(std::string const& value) {
    std::cout << "some_function(" << value << ")\n";
}

int main() {
    ofunctionstream out(&some_function);
    out << "hello" << ',' << " world: " << 42 << "\n";
    out << std::nounitbuf << "not" << " as " << "many" << " calls\n" << std::flush;
}

A fair chunk of the above code is actually unrelated to the task at hand: it implements a primitive version of std::function<void(std::string)> in case C++2011 can’t be used.

If you don’t want quite as many calls, you can turn off std::ios_base::unitbuf and only sent the data upon flushing the stream, e.g. using std::flush (yes, I know about std::endl but it unfortunately is typically misused to I strongly recommend to get rid of it and use std::flush where a flush is really meant).