Formatting C++ console output

Question

I\'ve been trying to format the output to the console for the longest time and nothing is really happening. I\'ve been trying to use as much of iomanip as I can

Answer 1

You can write a procedure that always print the same number of characters to standard output.

Something like:

string StringPadding(string original, size_t charCount)
{
    original.resize(charCount, ' ');
    return original;
}

And then use like this in your program:

void list::displayByName(ostream& out) const
{
    node *current_node  = headByName;

    out << StringPadding("Name", 30)
        << StringPadding("Location", 10)
        << StringPadding("Rating", 10)
        << StringPadding("Acre", 10) << endl;
    out << StringPadding("----", 30)
        << StringPadding("--------", 10)
        << StringPadding("------", 10)
        << StringPadding("----", 10) << endl;

    while ( current_node)
    {
        out << StringPadding(current_node->item.getName(), 30)
            << StringPadding(current_node->item.getLocation(), 10)
            << StringPadding(current_node->item.getRating(), 10)
            << StringPadding(current_node->item.getAcres(), 10)
            << endl;
        current_node = current_node->nextByName;
    }
}