Trying to set max output width

[kuriolis]

Hey guys,

I'm messing around with setw(), trying to make use of it, but it doesn't seem to be working.
I'm pretty sure I understand the syntax and use of setw(), having looked it up in a couple of references, and several online forum posts etc. It's not rocket science, so I'm not sure why this isn't doing what I want it to.
This is what my code looks like:

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    cout << "This is a line.\n";
    cout << setw(5) << "This line should be set to display 5 chars per line :)";
    cin.ignore(80, '\n');
       
}

and here's what the output looks like:

This is a line.
This line should be set to display 5 chars per line :)

So, honestly, what the crap? What am I missing?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[vichu8888]

Can i know what kind of ouput you needed?

[jlb]

The setw() pads the output with the number of characters specified. It doesn't truncate an entry that is larger than the pad size. So if your string was less than 5 characters it would add enough characters to occupy 5 spaces in the output. Note the padding character is usually a space but can be changed with the setfill() function.

[kuriolis]

Ah.
Thanks, jlb. Clearly I was confused.

That said, it seems that I need an easy method to set the maximum width of program output.

Any ideas?

[jlb]

Since you're using a constant you should create a string to hold the information and then either use the substr() function to print the desired number of characters or truncate this string to the proper length using std::string.erase().