how do I print an unsigned char as hex in c++ usin

Question

I want to work with unsigned 8-bit variables in C++. Either unsigned char or uint8_t do the trick as far as the arithmetic is concerned (which is expected, since AFAIK uint8_t is just an alias for unsigned char, or so the debugger presents it.

The problem is that if I print out the variables using ostream in C++ it treats it as char. If I have:

unsigned char a = 0;
unsigned char b = 0xff;
cout << "a is " << hex << a <<"; b is " << hex << b << endl;

then the output is:

a is ^@; b is 377

instead of

a is 0; b is ff

I tried using uint8_t, but as I mentioned before, that's typedef'ed to unsigned char, so it does the same. How can I print my variables correctly?

Edit: I do this in many places throughout my code. Is there any way I can do this without casting to int each time I want to print?

Answer 1

I use the following on win32/linux(32/64 bit):

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

template <typename T>
std::string HexToString(T uval)
{
    std::stringstream ss;
    ss << "0x" << std::setw(sizeof(uval) * 2) << std::setfill('0') << std::hex << +uval;
    return ss.str();
}

Answer 2

I think TrungTN and anon's answer is okay, but MartinStettner's way of implementing the hex() function is not really simple, and too dark, considering hex << (int)mychar is already a workaround.

here is my solution to make "<<" operator easier:

#include <sstream>
#include <iomanip>

string uchar2hex(unsigned char inchar)
{
  ostringstream oss (ostringstream::out);
  oss << setw(2) << setfill('0') << hex << (int)(inchar);
  return oss.str();
}

int main()
{
  unsigned char a = 131;
  std::cout << uchar2hex(a) << std::endl;
}

It's just not worthy implementing a stream operator :-)