Converting bool to text in C++

Jason Baker picture Jason Baker · Aug 27, 2008 · Viewed 161.9k times · Source

Maybe this is a dumb question, but is there any way to convert a boolean value to a string such that 1 turns to "true" and 0 turns to "false"? I could just use an if statement, but it would be nice to know if there is a way to do that with the language or standard libraries. Plus, I'm a pedant. :)

Answer

graham.reeds picture graham.reeds · Aug 27, 2008

How about using the C++ language itself?

bool t = true;
bool f = false;
std::cout << std::noboolalpha << t << " == " << std::boolalpha << t << std::endl;        
std::cout << std::noboolalpha << f << " == " << std::boolalpha << f << std::endl;

UPDATE:

If you want more than 4 lines of code without any console output, please go to cppreference.com's page talking about std::boolalpha and std::noboolalpha which shows you the console output and explains more about the API.

Additionally using std::boolalpha will modify the global state of std::cout, you may want to restore the original behavior go here for more info on restoring the state of std::cout.