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Lining Up Your Text
If you're trying to print a set of numbers to look like a table, you probably want your columns to line up nice and neat. The cout object includes a function called width that makes this easy. Here's a fourth take at our example:
cout << "Take 4" << endl; cout.precision(3); cout << showpoint; cout.width(10); cout << x << " "; cout.width(10); cout << y << " "; cout.width(10); cout << z << endl; cout.width(10); cout << p << " "; cout.width(10); cout << q << " "; cout.width(10); cout << r << endl; cout << endl;
Yuck! You might not be too happy with the code at this point. Seems I just made a mess of the code. But bear with me, please. Here's the new output:
Take 4
100 20 5
3.14 0.333 1.00
Hey! That does look a little better! Notice how I did this formatting: Before writing each number, I called the width function, passing 10, which is the width of the printed column. As for any concerns about the code going off and turning ugly, don't worry: Remember that typically you won't be hard-coding a batch of numbers to print out. Instead, you'll be reading the numbers from somewhere else, such as from an array, and you'll have the code inside a loop. Thus, on each iteration of the loop, you simply call the width function and then write out your number. No biggie.