Trying to understand and use namespaces

[JohnnyB]

I'm not sure if this is possible so hopefully someone can help figure this out. I'm using Dev C++ on WinXP.

This is a homework assignment and I can do it, I'm just trying to find a more efficient way.

I have code that prints out a bunch of stuff to the console. I also want to print the stuff to a file. Instead ofduplicating all my cout lines replacing cout with my fileobject I want to run through the code twice and the 2nd time through use a different namespace so that cout is now my fileobject and writes to a file instead of the console.

What I tried was creating the namespace before main like this

namespace mine
{
fstream cout;
}

Then inside main I put a for loop to run twice through all the couts that I want printed to the console and a file. At the very start of the for loop I have an if statement to execute some code on the 2nd run through the loop. This if statement looks like this.

if(p == 1)
{

using mine::cout;

cout.open("filename.txt", ios::out);
}


Now I figure that this should make cout my fileobject now. But I can't get it to work, it still prints to the console but the 2nd time through everything gets messed up.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot for any help.

[Bazzy]

I don't think that namespaces are the solution to your problem, I would use pointers intead:

   ostream *output;
   fstream file;

   //first point 'output' to 'cout'
   coutput=&cout;

   //do your first output like this:
  *output<< "something";

  //open file
  file.open("file.txt");
  // point 'output' to 'file'
  output=&file;
  //repeat your output (line 8) 

[firedraco]

Actually, all it would do is open the file for you, it wouldn't output anything.

[Zaita]

You wanna re-direct cout.

streambuf*                 sCoutBackup;
sCoutBackup     = cout.rdbuf(); // Backup Cout

ofstream                   fFile;
fFile.open(sFullFileName.c_str(), mode);

cout.rdbuf(fFile.rdbuf()); // Redirect cout to the file

cout << "goes to file" << endl;

fFile.close();

// Reset Cout
cout.rdbuf(sCoutBackup);

Sorry for bad layout. I was just copy+pasting from some code I have.