Question

What I am trying to do here is write a function repeat that accepts a string and a positive integer n and returns that string repeated n times. Thus repeat("fho", 3) would return the string “hohoho”. However, the below test program runs but doesn’t display the result or hang. I tried to add a system pause but that didn’t help. What am I missing?

#include <string>
#include <iostream>
std::string repeat( const std::string &word, int times ) {
   std::string result ;
   result.reserve(times*word.length()); // avoid repeated reallocation
   for ( int a = 0 ; a < times ; a++ ) 
      result += word ;
   return result ;
}

int main( ) {
   std::cout << repeat( "Ha" , 5 ) << std::endl ;
   return 0 ;
}

Answer 1

Your code seems to work, but personally I think I’d write it a bit differently:

std::string repeat(std::string const &input, size_t reps) { 
    std::ostringstream result;

    std::fill_n(
        std::ostream_iterator<std::string>(result), 
        reps, 
        input);

    return result.str();
}