Question

there has been many previous questions about redirecting stdout/stderr to a file. is there a way to redirect stdout/stderr to a string?

Answer 1

Yes, you can redirect it to an std::stringstream:

std::stringstream buffer;
std::streambuf * old = std::cout.rdbuf(buffer.rdbuf());

std::cout << "Bla" << std::endl;

std::string text = buffer.str(); // text will now contain "Bla\n"

You can use a simple guard class to make sure the buffer is always reset:

struct cout_redirect {
    cout_redirect( std::streambuf * new_buffer ) 
        : old( std::cout.rdbuf( new_buffer ) )
    { }

    ~cout_redirect( ) {
        std::cout.rdbuf( old );
    }

private:
    std::streambuf * old;
};