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[-] heavydust@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 year ago

No debate, std::endl can be a disaster on some platforms due to flushing crap all the time.

[-] mmddmm@lemm.ee 34 points 1 year ago

It's a very C++ thing that the language developers saw the clusterfuck that is stream flushing on the kernel and decided that the right course of action was to create another fucking layer of hidden inconsistent flushing.

I hear C++ was greatly inspired by the fifth circle of hell.

[-] jdeath@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

programmers manage to do stupid shit in every language. i was wondering if there was a way to stop them, and golang comes close but maybe proves it can't be done. idk!

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago

Just because the box says something is flushable doesn't mean you should flush it.

[-] pelya@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

printf is superior and more concise, and snprintf is practically the only C string manipulation function that is not painful to use.

Try to print a 32-bit unsigned int as hexadecimal number of exactly 8 digits, using cout. You can do std::hex and std::setw(8) and std::setfill('0') and don't forget to use std::dec afterwards, or you can just, you know, printf("%08x") like a sane person.

Just don't forget to use -Werror=format but that is the default option on many compilers today.

C++23 now includes std::print which is exactly like printf but better, so the whole argument is over.

[-] SqueakyBeaver 3 points 1 year ago

I went digging in cppref at the format library bc I thought c++20 or c++23 added something cool.

Found std::print and was about to reply to this comment to share it bc I thought it was interesting. Then I read the last sentence.

Darn you and your predicting my every move /j

[-] Oinks 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I am very sorry to remind everyone about the existence of Visual Basic, but it has:

  • VbCrLf
  • VbNewLine
  • ControlChars.CrLf
  • ControlChars.NewLine
  • Environment.NewLine
  • Chr(13) & Chr(10)

And I know what you're asking: Yes, of course all of them have subtly different behavior, and some of them only work in VB.NET and not in classic VB or VBA.

The only thing you can rely on is that "\r\n" doesn't work.

[-] ulterno@programming.dev 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Simple. \n when you just want a newline.
endl when you need to flush at the moment.

Useful in case you are printing a debug output right before some function that might do bed stuff to buffers.


Edit: I wrote println instead of endl somehow. Guess I need more downtime

[-] embed_me@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

I only program in C. I was under the assumption that \n also flushes

[-] pelya@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It depends on whether you are printing to a terminal or to a file (and yes the terminal is also a file), and even then you can control the flushing behaviour using something like unbuffer

[-] ulterno@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I remember having to fflush a couple of times.

[-] LambdaRX@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I prefer \n for 0.001% better performance

[-] BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 year ago
std::cout << "\nwhy not both" << std::endl;
[-] Gustephan@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Fuck endl, all my homies hate endl

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 5 points 1 year ago

Cout << "\n"; is dumb and you should feel bad

[-] Gustephan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

You're right, that is incredibly dumb. Just not for the reasons you think it is. Imagine using iostream rather than stdio and unironically trying to clown on \n

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is this not a debate for freshman students and other assorted opinionated know-nothings? Or just people shitposting.

My mistake. You think it's srs.

(And your opinion is still bad)

[-] Gustephan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Oh no! Did I hurt your feelings by clapping back when you insulted me on a shitpost comment chain? Your lack of self awareness is astounding

[-] jdeath@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

bloods 4 lyfe

[-] diemartin@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago
fprintf(stdout, "%c", '\012');
[-] Archr@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[-] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

I just learned that in Python, it's fucking terrible. Python is a fucking mess and my next script will be in a different language.

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Perhaps TS is not a terrible language for shell scripts after all

[-] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Never tried it, but I will probably be more at home than python.

[-] jdeath@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

python is a bad joke that never ends

[-] andMoonsValue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

As a python lover, I have to ask, what don't you like about it and what languages do you generally prefer?

[-] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I prefer strongly typed languages. Using bytes isn't intuitive.

Transforming certain data types into other data types is often not straightforward.

The identation is the worst though. Let me format the code however I want.

[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 5 points 1 year ago

In PHP it exists as well. I try to use PHP_EOL but when I'm lazy I simply do "\n".

[-] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago

For me the answer is “Building backend applications with it instead of CLI applications, like Lerdorf intended.”

But also "\n" because it's easier and PHP_EOL is just an alias for "\n"; it's not even platform-dependent.

[-] rikudou@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago

PHP_EOL depends on your host system, it's \r\n on Windows.

I don't really want to use what Lerdorf intended, PHP <= 4 was horrible, 5.x was mainly getting slowly rid of nonsense and with 7.x PHP started its slow path of redemption and entered its modern era.

While Lerdorf's vision was great at that time for its intended use case, I wouldn't want to build anything serious in it.

[-] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago

It actually outputs "\n" on a Windows system, but modern Windows to recognise that as enough of a newline, nowadays.

I don't really want to use what Lerdorf intended, PHP <= 4 was horrible

Actually a great point!

[-] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Wasn't this {fmt} library merged into STL now? Does this solve this issue?

Anyways, there was also a constant that is the OS line ending without a flush, right?

[-] astrsk@fedia.io 3 points 1 year ago

Just puts(“I’m a teapot”); :)

[-] palordrolap@fedia.io 3 points 1 year ago

If endl is a function call and/or macro that magically knows the right line ending for whatever ultimately stores or reads the output stream, then, ugly though it is, endl is the right thing to use.

If a language or compiler automatically "do(es) the right thing" with \n as well, then check your local style guide. Is this your code? Do what you will. Is this for your company? Better to check what's acceptable.

If you want to guarantee a Unix line ending use \012 instead. Or \cJ if your language is sufficiently warped.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago

It's a "stream manipulator" function that not only generates a new line, it also flushes the stream.

[-] pelya@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Ah don't worry, if you do fopen(file, "w") on Windows and forget to use "wb" flag, it will automatically replace all your \n with \r\n when you do fwrite, then you will try to debug for half a day your corrupted jpeg file, which totally never happened to me because I'm an experienced C++ developer who can never make such a novice mistake.

[-] r00ty@kbin.life 3 points 1 year ago

Maybe c# has similar. There's \r\n or \n like c++ and Environment.NewLine.

Probably it's similar in that Environment.NewLine takes into account the operating system in use and I wonder if endl in c++ does the same thing?

[-] vithigar@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

C# also has verbatim strings, in which you can just put a literal newline.

string foo = @"This string 
has a line break!";
[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Doesn’t endl predate C++?

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

It's not in C, if that's what you mean.

[-] istdaslol@feddit.org 2 points 1 year ago

\n is fun until you’re an a system that needs an additional \r

[-] edinbruh@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago

Unix needed only \n because it had complex drivers that could replace \n with whatever sequence of special characters the printer needed. Also, while carriage return is useful, they saw little use for line feed

On dos (which was intended for less powerful hardware than unix) you had to actually use the correct sequence which often but not always was \r\n (because teleprinters used that and because it's the "most correct" one).

Now that teleprinters don't exist, and complex drivers are not an issue for windows, and everyone prefers to have a single \n, windows still uses \r\n, for backward compatibility.

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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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