Actual use of imbue in C++

Welcome back everyone! Your wait is finally over as I am back with another interesting programming topic. So today’s topic is something that most of us either haven’t heard about, or simply skip because we find it difficult to understand. Although not much used, the knowledge of this topic would prove to be very useful to us at times. Yes, as you must have read the title, we will be talking about imbue and its applications in C++ using various interesting examples. So let’s get started straight away.

What does the word “Imbue” mean?

In programming terms, imbue refers to the process of associating a locale object with an I/O stream or other objects that require locale-specific behavior. Sounds confusing, right? Well, even I was confused at first when I read about it for the first time. So let me take an example to make the understanding process much easier.

Imagine we are writing a recipe for someone who doesn’t speak our language. We could simply write the recipe in our own language, but that wouldn’t be very helpful for them. Instead, we could “imbue” the recipe with their language by translating it into their native tongue and using familiar units of measurement. This would make the recipe much easier for them to understand and follow. Similarly, imbuing an object with a locale in C++ makes it “speak” the language of the target audience.

In short, imbue provides the facility to process the input and output of the data, and allows us to change how data is interpreted and represented.

Some common uses of  Imbue

Now that we have understood the informal meaning of the term imbue, we will look at some of its common uses to get a better understanding.

1. We can use the imbue function to control how numbers and currencies get formatted in output streams (cout is an example of output stream).
2. We can use the imbue function to control how dates and times are parsed in input streams (cin is an example of input stream).
3. We can also use the imbue function to control the order in which strings are sorted using functions like sort.

Hence, we can see how powerful the imbue tool is, as it allows us to make our programs more adaptable and user-friendly for different cultures and dialects.

Examples codes for a better understanding

Now that we have understood about the imbue function, let me give you some example codes so that we never forget about this imbue function as long as we are alive.

#include <iostream>
#include <locale>
using namespace std;
int main() {
  locale french_locale("fr_FR");// Create a French locale

  cout.imbue(french_locale);// Imbue cout with the French locale

  cout << 1234.56 << endl; // Output: 1 234,56

  cout.imbue(locale("")); // Restore the default locale

  cout << 1234.56 << endl; // Output: 1234.56

  return 0;
}

Let me explain the code in depth:

1. First of all, don’t forget to include the locale library to use the imbue functionality.
2. Create a french_locale named variable, and then convert the cout to output characters/numbers in French locale.
3. Now if we try to print a decimal number using cout, the decimal point in the number will get replaced by the ‘,’ as in French ‘,’ is used in place of ‘.’

The output of the code will be :

1234,56
1234.56

TIP: Try running the code on a LINUX OS as there might be some errors related to locale names not found, and if those errors occur, it would be a lot easier to solve them on a LINUX OS.

So guys that was all from my side, I hope you guys have understood this easy yet fantastic function imbue. Feel free to comment down below in case of any doubts/queries. Signing off, sayonara!