Printing to stringstream and retaining formatting

[mike-5345]

Hello,

I want to be able to print a table to a stringstream but when I do this the special formatting (colour, boldness, etc.) is not retained.

I want to be able to pass around the table as a string in memory. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks,
Mike

[p-ranav]

Could you redirect std::cout to a buffer? I'm not sure if this works but it's worth a try.

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

// print your table
std::cout << yourTable << std::endl;

// Get the table as a string
std::string text = buffer.str();

// Restore original buffer before exiting
std::cout.rdbuf(prevcoutbuf);

[suitmyself]

Could you redirect std::cout to a buffer? I'm not sure if this works but it's worth a try.

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

// print your table
std::cout << yourTable << std::endl;

// Get the table as a string
std::string text = buffer.str();

// Restore original buffer before exiting
std::cout.rdbuf(prevcoutbuf);

not work

[nepto]

It actually does work.

So let me summarize it. If you have table the standard way of printing is:

std::cout << table;

When you want to capture the string, you can use table.str().c_str()

However, when you print it, the formatting (notably colors) is lost:

printf("%s", table.str().c_str()); // formatting and colors are lost

The workaround that @p-ranav provided is a good one and works as expected. You can capture the string and do whatever you want with it. Also print it with printf() with all the formatting retained:

std::stringstream buffer;
std::streambuf* prevcoutbuf = std::cout.rdbuf(buffer.rdbuf());
std::cout << table << std::endl;
std::string text = buffer.str();
printf("%s", text.c_str()); // formatting and colors are good
std::cout.rdbuf(prevcoutbuf);

It would be great if Tabulate had a function for capturing the string, but this workaround works just fine.