Question

Let’s say that we have an array with n elements (n > 0).

We would like to output a list of those elements, with a separator between them.

A common approach to this problem is:

foreach item
  (
    output item
    output separator
  )
trim last separator

But it seems a bit messy to have to do that.

Another approach would be:

check that there is at least one element
loop
  (
     output element
     next element, or break if no more elements
     output separator
  )

But I am not sure that it will always work.

Do you see other clever ways to do that, for example in C, C++?

Answer 1

char *sep = "";
for (i = 0; i < size; ++i) {
    printf("%s%s", sep, item[i]);
    sep = ", ";
}