How to easily indent output to ofstream?

Question

Is there an easy way to indent the output going to an ofstream object? I have a C++ character array that is null terminate and includes newlines. I\'d like to output this

Answer 1

There is no simple way, but a lot has been written about the complex ways to achieve this. Read this article for a good explanation of the topic. Here is another article, unfortunately in German. But its source code should help you.

For example you could write a function which logs a recursive structure. For each level of recursion the indentation is increased:

std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& stream, Parameter* rp) 
{
    stream << "Parameter: " << std::endl;

    // Get current indent
    int w = format::get_indent(stream);

    stream << "Name: "  << rp->getName();
    // ... log other attributes as well

    if ( rp->hasParameters() )
    {
        stream << "subparameter (" << rp->getNumParameters() << "):\n";

        // Change indent for sub-levels in the hierarchy
        stream << format::indent(w+4);

        // write sub parameters        
        stream << rp->getParameters();
    }

    // Now reset indent
    stream << format::indent(w);

    return stream; 

}