Question

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C++ alignment when printing cout <<

I am writing a set of words in an output file . I have left three tabspaces using ‘\t’ character between the words . But at times when the words are too small or too large there seems to be a problem with the alignment. How to give a constant space between words which would work even when the words are small ?

Here’s what i am talking about.

    Word:elpmas         Count:1
    Word:This           Count:4
    Word:pmasel         Count:1
    Word:is         Count:1
    Word:sample         Count:1
    Word:sentence           Count:1
    Word:si         Count:1
    Word:a          Count:1

I want to have a constant space between the words and the counts. I currently use

cout<< "Word:"<< hash->key <<"\t\t\t" << "Count:" << hash->value <<endl;

Help me out.

Answer 1

The setw stream manipulator is useful for aligning columns in tabular output. For instance,

cout << "Word:" << setw(15) << hash->key << " Count:" << hash->value << endl;

Will properly align your output provided that your keys are at most 15 characters.