Question

Is there a way to create an ostream instance which basically doesn’t do anything ?

For example :

std::ostream dummyStream(...);
dummyStream << "Nothing will be printed";

I could just create an ostringstream, but data will be buffered (and I really don’t want to make anything with them, so it adds a useless overhead).

Any idea ?

[edit] Found this related question which suits my needs. However, I think it could be useful to have a answer saying how to create a valid (no badbit) output stream with standard c++.

Answer 1

You need a custom streambuf.

class NullBuffer : public std::streambuf
{
public:
  int overflow(int c) { return c; }
};

You can then use this buffer in any ostream class

NullBuffer null_buffer;
std::ostream null_stream(&null_buffer);
null_stream << "Nothing will be printed";

streambuf::overflow is the function called when the buffer has to output data to the actual destination of the stream. The NullBuffer class above does nothing when overflow is called so any stream using it will not produce any output.